Dreamers
by Azula Always Lies
Summary: Back at headquarters, Dita finds herself searching for the answers to some unsettling questions. How is she doing things she shouldn't be able to do? Why is she feeling things she shouldn't be able to feel? And what the hell is a dream, anyway?
1. Anomaly

Disclaimer: I know very little about computers, even less about Japanese culture, and nothing whatsoever about the Japanese government. And yet here I am, writing a fanfic about computers who work for the Japanese government. If anyone's reading this, I implore you: be gentle.

Author's note: As should be made evident by the spelling of certain names and the quoting of certain lines, this story is based on _Chobits _as it appears in the original English translation of the manga by Tokyopop. Not the omnibus, not scanlations, and definitely not the anime – because it does, in fact, make a difference.

Quote that inspired this story's title: "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." – Oscar Wilde

**01100001 01101110 01101111 01101101 01100001 01101100 01111001 [Anomaly]**

"What are you doing?"

_The shades come down, the world goes black. That's how it's supposed to be. The earth spins around the sun, winter comes after fall, and when the shades come down – when he bids them come down, anyway – the world goes black. These are inalterable facts. Or at least, I thought they were. _

_At first, all goes as programmed. The shades come down, the world goes black, I hear a distant _click_; my systems shut down, and my feeds cut out. All in the space of a second. And it takes me a second, to realize that I'm still aware—that I'm seeing without seeing, feeling without feeling, teeming with impossible, indefinable consciousness. I'm not where I was before. The darkness breaks – no, shatters, like a cherry-blossom tree shorn by a storm – and I'm not where I was before. _

_This place is far from the rooftop. Far from Zima. Far from _her._ This is nowhere I've been, nowhere I know. It's not dark, but it's lightless – it's spongy and slick, and warm like human blood. Pulsing, too, like a human heart. This place is intensely human. It flutters, it breathes, it's latticed with veins—I can feel it swell and knit around me, narrowing by degrees. Maybe this place is a snake's throat, and I am a mouse. Maybe this place is a hot palm, and I am a coin. It doesn't make sense, but nothing's made sense, not since the shades came down. There's nothing I can do._

_Wet walls throb and contract, hug me vise-tight. I tuck my legs into my chest, fold my arms around them—or—_I_ don't, but something does. Without willing it, I close up like a fist. The heartbeat grows louder, until it resounds throughout me, until I feel myself vibrate with each _thud_; the shudders bloom in my feet and climb upwards, into my chest. Soon, they melt into a dull ache. A pressure I don't understand. I've felt pain before – I was built to feel pain, because pain is a warning, pain is a sign – but never pain like this._

_The weight on my chest is unbearable, crushing me from the inside out. If I didn't know better, I'd think this is how it feels to drown. It's like I want to breathe, but—I _don't _breathe, I _can't_—and suddenly the darkness returns. Bursts into being and engulfs me, swallows me whole. The world goes black again._

_Click._

The shades came up. The pain in my chest faded to a soft buzz, the hum of a computer booting up; everything came back online. I was back on the rooftop again. I knew without looking, because I knew what was holding me then, and it was neither throat nor palm—I knew because I would know Zima's arms anywhere.

"Where's the girl?" I heard myself demand, from what seemed like far away. As if through a bad connection. As if nothing had happened, but—_but—_ "What happened to the program?"

"It stopped."

I didn't know what a dream was, back then.

Not that I hadn't heard the word. Zima had said it around me, maybe even to me, but I'd never given it much thought; he said a lot of things I didn't understand. And even if I had known what it meant – _dream, noun: a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep _– the connection wouldn't have clicked.

Cross-reference: words in that definition, words for the anomaly. No matches. It wasn't a succession of images, it wasn't—an _image_ at all. It was a sensation. A vivid, lucid sensation, like nothing I had ever felt or seen; it was a memory that roamed unclassified on my drive, because I had nowhere to put it. But I couldn't forget it. Of course, I never forgot anything, but most memories could be filed away – even bothersome ones could be prioritized, pushed back. So I wouldn't have to address them until I was ready.

But the anomaly refused to be pushed back. That was what I had decided to call it, _the anomaly, _for lack of a better word; I didn't know to call it a dream, and I didn't want to call it a virus. I didn't want to think I was broken—that something was actually _wrong._ I thought if I ignored it, it might go away. But I couldn't ignore it, because what kind of idiot programs a government persocom for denial?

Not whoever programmed me, that's for sure. I let it bother me because I was built to let it bother me, and there was no escaping that. All the way back to headquarters, it was gnawing at my processor, souring my mood. Tugging the corners of my mouth down, even as Zima did his damnedest to make me smile. I should've been happy, I guess. We'd done what we'd set out to do, albeit not as I'd set out to do it. I should've felt some sense of accomplishment. But with the anomaly eating at me – not to mention Zima's love nonsense, which didn't help at all – what he called my "temper" was worse than ever.

"I can't believe this," I groused when we touched down outside the main building, under my metaphorical breath. "We're important enough to trust with the fate of the world, but not important enough to get remote assignments? Why can't we just check in online?"

Cheerfully ignoring me, Zima opened a mirrored-glass door, and gestured to the lobby beyond. "Ladies first."

"I'm not a lady."

"Well, not with that attitude, you're not."

I shot him a glare. "You know what I meant."

"Of course I do. And in any case, you're lady-shaped; that's good enough for me." I knew Zima well enough to know that he could do this all day. Unlike some of us, _he_ had little better to do; for the most part, his job was to stand around and be important, and act like he knew everything because he did. He never let anything bother him, and with good reason, too – I did enough worrying for us both. "Besides, what's so bad about checking in with the terminal?" he added when I gave up and pushed past him, the door swinging shut in our wake. "I like Aiko. Don't you?"

I swear, I could _hear_ him smirk. He knew very well how I felt about Aiko.

It's not as if it was my fault. If it was his job to be important, it was my job to be mistrustful – even hostile – towards everyone but him. Other 'coms especially. I was supposed to protect him, after all, and they posed the greatest threat; it was no human who'd hacked him a few nights back. But try as I might to explain that – to wipe that maddening grin off his face, as we headed for the desk at the end of the hall – Zima never bought it.

"Hey there, Aiko," he said to the 'com behind the desk, flashing her a trademark smile. "What have you got for us today?"

"I think the question is, what have you got for me?" Aiko trilled. It didn't help my case, cringing like I did – I'm sure I saw Zima shake his head – but she was just so _saccharine._ Bad enough that she should look like a child's doll, all corkscrew curls and saucer-eyes. Did she have to have a voice like one, too? "You'll need to file your report from your last mission before I give you your marching orders. You know that."

"Already done."

"What?" I whipped my head in his direction, eyes wide. "You already sent the report?" I hissed. "Without even _asking_ me?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Did you have something to add?"

"I might have! You didn't even let me see it!" I couldn't believe him. If a persocom could get a headache, I thought I felt one coming on. "I mean, what did you put? 'We hung out on various rooftops for about twenty years, and in the end 'our girl' found her 'someone just for her''?"

"Something like that, yeah."

Aiko giggled. "You two are so funny! I'll just go ahead and look up your next assignments for you, okay?" Still more than put out, I crossed my arms and stewed while Aiko loaded her library, stripes of light gliding through her eyes. It didn't take her long. At a glance, one might mistake Aiko for a toy, but those of us who knew her knew better; she didn't compare to Zima, or even to me, but she was a powerful computer. As the coordination terminal for the entire building, she had to be. "Here we are. Zima, you're to report to the maintenance bay for a hardware update. It seems your system's been sending us auto-reports of data overload, so they're going to need to expand your drive." She placed a hand to her cheek and clicked her tongue, looking up at him as though he were an injured puppy. "Poor dear. You really do work too hard."

I nearly snorted out loud. Swallowed it just in time, along with a heavy dose of dismay; if Zima was going to be in maintenance, what did that mean for me? "What about me?" I demanded, before Zima could feed her some stupid line. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Dita." She blinked at me, almost surprised. Like she'd forgotten I was there. "You're to return to your pod and shut down, until such time as Zima is operational again."

"_God_—damn it—!"

I should've known. Without Zima, I was useless – not worth the power it took to keep me functional. Sure, if someone owed them a favor, the upstairs offices might drag me in. Instead of shut down, I might get stuck wired to every busted 'com within a five-floor radius, patching bargain-bin firewalls and chasing down two-bit bugs. Like that was any better than the pod. I could fry my circuits with demeaning busywork, or I could effectively drop out of existence; I could waste time, or I could waste space. Either way, I lost. And I didn't even get to pick my poison.

Unless. "Hold on," I said to Aiko, the proverbial lightbulb switching on above my head. As government property, all of my time had to be accounted for – if Aiko's files said I was supposed to be somewhere I wasn't, it'd be the shitstorm of the century – and all of my activities approved. Aiko wouldn't give me a sanction just to screw around, that much I knew. But it seemed the anomaly might have an upside. "What if there's something else I need to do?"

She cocked her head. "Like what?"

_Like figure out what the hell is wrong with me. _"Like—run diagnostics."

I saw her eyes glaze as she opened my file, stored among countless others for every person and persocom on her roster. For some reason, it pissed me off. "But you're not scheduled for any routine—"

"It's not routine," I interrupted her. "It's—troubleshooting."

Without quite meaning to, I glanced at Zima, and saw one corner of his mouth twitch in an almost-grin. As if he knew exactly what kind of 'trouble' I meant. Maybe he thought that was code for his love nonsense – maybe because partially, it was – or maybe he knew about the anomaly, even before I told him. It wouldn't surprise me. Frustrate me, sure, but not surprise me. That was always how it was with Zima – as soon as I was sure I knew something he_ couldn't_ know, it turned out that he did.

For Aiko's part, she seemed clueless, if inordinately upset. Her injured-puppy gaze was no less annoying the second time around. "Oh, no! Is something wrong?"

"No," I told her, feeling momentarily fortunate to be one of few 'coms allowed to lie. Most are programmed against it, but—sometimes one had to lie, in my line of work. "It's fine, it's—probably just a fluke. But look, can you give me the sanction or not?

"Well, sure I can. Just give me a second to revise your schedule." Once more, her chest hummed and her eyes glimmered, literally for the second she'd promised. Unlike me, she never said things she didn't know to be true. "All done. You're now listed as performing corrective self-maintenance, until such time as Zima is operational again."

"And what time would that be?" Zima cut in.

Again, Aiko made a sympathetic _tsk-tsk_ing noise, batting long blonde eyelashes at him. "Oh, honey, they don't know."

He heaved a dramatic sigh. "Data is a cruel mistress."

"Isn't she, though?"

Unable to stand another second with either of them, I left Zima and Aiko to trade sweet nothings over the reception desk, heading for the bank of elevators to my right. I punched the button marked with an "up" arrow – probably harder than I needed to – and folded my arms over my chest. _Deserting me in this junk heap. Filing that report without me. Pulling that shit with the shades in the first place—what right did he have to shut me down? _I refused the urge to let my eyes slide sideways, my head turn back towards the desk. Screw Zima. Why should I care what he did? _I'm not even going to miss him, _I told myself. _Not even a little. I work my ass off for him, I_ try_ to do what we're told, and what does he give me? All of this bullshit about _love.

But before the elevator could reach the lobby – before, judging by the floor display panel, it could even come close – I felt someone grab my ponytail. "Dita, you break my heart." Suddenly, I found myself blinking up into Zima's eyes, his tug having tipped my head. "Were you really going to leave without saying goodbye?"

"Maybe I was." I jerked away and spun around. Eyed him none too forgivingly. "What's it to you?"

He took a step closer to me. Just to spite him, I took a step back. "Aren't you going to miss me?"

"No."

"I'm going to miss you."

"No, you're not. You'll be shut down. You're not going to miss anything."

"Anything but you."

He took another step closer, and I took another step back—and before I knew it, I'd hit the elevator doors. Still stubbornly shut. Nevertheless, I glared up at him, unwilling to recognize defeat. Zima being Zima, he only chuckled, and reached down to card a hand into my hair; I didn't mean for it to happen, but a second later I was crushed against him, my face buried in his chest, his arm around my shoulders. I could feel the hum from beneath his skin, like a whisper, like a hummingbird's heart. The warmth of everything working inside him.

We had a sense of smell, or something like it, but only because it could be useful, like pain. We might smell something – something like smoke, or oil, or gas – before our other sensors caught it. I wished, in that moment, that someone had given that more thought. I wished they'd considered me, here, near-dizzy from the smell of leather, and the scuffed buckles on his collar, and his skin which was synthetic and shouldn't have smelled like anything at all. And whatever it was he used in his hair, to keep it just tousled enough, and me always wanting to touch it.

_God. Maybe I really _am_ glitching. _

"For knowing everything," I mumbled into his coat, "you can be awfully stupid."

He pressed a kiss into my hair. "I know."

All of a sudden, I heard a _ding _and the elevator doors opened behind me, sent me stumbling backwards into the car. Before they closed again, Zima tossed me a wave. "Good luck shooting your trouble," he said. "Let me know how it goes."

I was one of the smartest computers in the world. The programs that governed me, the code that composed me were the best ever written; I could say and do and understand things far above most persocoms' heads. So what was it rebelling inside me, when the doors slid shut on his smile? Why wasn't the part of me that said _protect Zima _– the part of me that said _keep him close _– smart enough to know when to shut off? _He doesn't need me now, _I told myself as I pressed the button for my floor, felt the car jolt and rise. _He doesn't need me._

_So why do I still feel like I need him?_


	2. Diagnostics

**01100100 01101001 01100001 01100111 01101110 01101111 01110011 01110100 01101001 01100011 01110011 [Diagnostics]**

My first stop was the screening room on the sixteenth floor. There were several, but that was the largest one, with the most panels and the fastest connection; the whiteboard outside indicated it was free. Slipping inside, I shut the door and sat down in a wheeled office chair, facing an arc-shaped desk. An assortment of flat-panel monitors, in various sizes, were mounted on the wall above it. In the low light, they loomed over me like dark clouds.

Set into the desk was a terminal, with a series of ports wirelessly linked to the screens. I popped an ear, pulled out a cable, and plugged myself in. A second later, the screens went live, with the standard readout of specs and stats; from then on, everything I did I could see on the display. I could have surveyed files without it, sure, but it would have taken longer – there was only so much I could process internally.

I began my troubleshooting by scanning everything in my library – all of my files, all of my memories, any data that might have glitched and manifested as the anomaly. I watched it all blaze across the screens. My thinking was, maybe what I'd seen was a misplaced memory, or a file I'd downloaded and lost; maybe it hadn't come from thin air. Not that I wanted to think my system was betraying me, pulling up the wrong things at the wrong times, but it would've been better than a virus. Better if I could figure it out.

No hits. Nothing. None of my memories so much as _resembled_ the lightless place, much less came up a match. To make matters worse, I couldn't find it _anywhere _– not in my library, not on my desktop, not even in my logs where it should've been. Where I should have found the memory of the anomaly, archived with the other events of that day, there was only a record of my having been shut down. _Impossible. _I slit my eyes on the screens. _If I have a record of it, I remember it. If I remember it, I have a record of it. If, and _only_ if._

_These are inalterable facts. _

I disconnected and slumped in the chair. There were no more alternatives now, no room for denial. There _had_ to be something wrong with me. If I were human, I'd have thought I was going crazy; since I wasn't, the word was _broken._ So I did what I was programmed to do, in a situation like this – what I'd told Aiko I'd be doing in the first place.

If any system could find a virus, it was mine. It's what I was designed to do. After all, if I couldn't keep myself in working order, how could I be expected to do the same for Zima? Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time – and that's a statistic, not a figure of speech – my software could hunt down and crush a threat within seconds, so I wasn't exactly worried. I wasn't happy, but I wasn't worried. Even if I was infected, at least there was something I could do. At least I could, as Zima said, shoot my trouble and be done with it, and move on to fortifying my firewalls.

I ran a general diagnostic, there in the screening room. An exhaustive search of all systems, for anything malfunctioning or compromised. Curled up knees-to-nose in the chair, I stared at the ceiling and wound my ponytail around my fingers, drummed my nails against the chair's arm, listened to the sound like a hornets' nest walled up in my chest. The buzz chased itself in circles, for what seemed like longer than usual, and then at last I heard a _ping _– the tone that meant the end of a search.

But—there was _nothing._ No bugs. No cracks in security. Not so much as an unnoticed update. According to my software – the best software in the country – I was operating flawlessly. Had I any blood, it would have drained from my face. _Impossible. Impossible! _Had I any breath, I would have held it, as I ran the diagnostic over again. _I must have missed something. The program must have glitched._

_Ping. _Nothing. I ran it over again.

_Ping. _Nothing. Once more.

_Ping._ Nothing. 

My system was convinced the anomaly didn't exist. I wasn't sure a persocom could feel numb, without shutting off its stimuli sensors, but if it could then I did as I left the screening room. Down the hall, there was a research room with an old-fashioned stationary computer, and it stood empty; coursing with nervous energy, I practically leapt into the office chair. I punched the power key and glared at the stationary's monitor, a touchscreen bolted to the wall. _Come on, wake up. Wakeupwakeupwakeup!_

After about twenty years of loading on the stationary's part, I plugged in and brought up its diagnostic center. It didn't have an all-inclusive program, like I did, but it had multi-part system surveys for bugs and security breaches, and from what I'd heard they weren't half-bad for a dinosaur. And seeing as I'd sooner crash than go to another 'com, it was pretty much my only choice. My diagnostics were never wrong – or at least, they hadn't been yet – but I figured it couldn't hurt to double-check on a system outside my own. If there was something wrong with me, it could be that there was something wrong with my diagnostics. Maybe the stationary would see something I couldn't.

_Loading malware detection suite. _I watched the words flash onto the screen with narrowed eyes, synthetic nerves strung too tight to fidget. _Initiating malware search part one on humanoid unit 01165B._

Five excruciating minutes passed, while the stationary scanned the first half of my data. I don't think I moved once the whole time. _0 results found, _it finally announced with a _ping. _For whatever reason, I had the presence of processor to be vaguely offended, that I should share a default search tone with this—this _thing. Initiating malware search part two. _

Another five minutes slid by like molasses, if possible even slower than the first. _0 results found. Proceed to security fortification suite?_

_God. _The stationary may not have been as saccharine as most persocoms, but it was a hell of a lot dumber. I tapped _yes _on the screen.

_Run security fortification diagnostic on humanoid unit 01165B?_

I'd never hated another computer so much.

In any case, it did what I asked. It insisted on calling me _humanoid unit 01165B_, but it did what I asked, and it confirmed what I'd feared: zero results. All of my nervous energy melted into dismay. My head swam, all at once heavy as lead; I groaned and let it drop into my hands. I knew, the second I heard that last _ping_, what I was supposed to do. Like most all 'coms, when faced with a problem, I was programmed to first investigate and attempt to solve it on my own – and if that didn't work, report it to my owner.

Well, not _owner_, per se. Zima and I didn't have an owner, but we had a whole network of supervisors, both direct and indirect; at this stage in the game, I should've been reporting the anomaly to a Ms. Hanako Yamane. Since we retrieved most of our assignments from Aiko, I'd only met her a handful of times. And there was nothing I wanted less than to drag my ass to her doorstep now, to turn myself in as defective.

"Hello?" A rap on the door jerked my head towards it. Before I could answer, it swung open on the perpetual sneer of Kaori Kano, and her hapless persocom May. "We need this room," she said snidely, heels clicking as she sauntered in. "Get out."

I was done there. I could've left. And if I were an ordinary 'com, I would have, with copious apologies for inconveniencing Ms. Kano. But I wasn't, and I didn't, and though I never much cared whether I inconvenienced anyone, I could take special pleasure in inconveniencing her. I didn't know what Ms. Kano did, specifically, aside from work in the offices. All I knew, from my fortunately few dealings with her, was that she was as two-faced, self-absorbed, and generally obnoxious a human as you'd ever find – and seeing as I disliked humans near as much as I disliked persocoms, that was saying something.

"Your name's not on the whiteboard," I informed her, without moving from my seat. "You can't just tell me to leave."

"Well, that's what I'm doing. And this is important, so be quick about it, too."

I sat back in the chair. Stared her down with one eyebrow raised, considering just how wrong her attitude rubbed me right then. All humans believed 'coms existed to serve them, but at least some of them were nice about it; Ms. Kano, on the other hand, seemed to think I ought to be licking her boots. "You have a computer," I pointed out, nodding at May. "Why do you need the stationary?"

"You_ are_ a computer. Why do you?"

Well. There wasn't much I could say to that. Not without telling her about the anomaly, anyway. So I set about closing up shop, wasting as much time as I could; while she stood there with her arms crossed, tapping an impatient foot, I logged off the stationary click by click. I shut it down, so she'd have to boot it up again. And when I unplugged, I didn't let the cable snap back. Instead, I held the end between my thumb and index finger, and it slid slowly back into its port in my ear – the panel of which I then shut manually, with a smirk and a satisfying _click._

"If you need anything else," I said to Ms. Kano as I left, channeling Aiko's signature chirp, "please don't hesitate to kiss my ass."

She shut the door the second I cleared the threshold – slammed it, more like. Even so, I could hear her sniping to May. "Can you even believe her? She thinks she's hot shit because she gets to babysit the data bank. Like that makes her any better than other 'coms." She snorted. "He may be hard to replace, but she's not."

As if I didn't know.

I should have gone to Ms. Yamane. I shouldn't have had any choice but to go to Ms. Yamane; no matter what I _wanted _to do, no matter what I _wished_ I could do, my programming shouldn't have left it up to me. But against all logic – _logic_ meaning disturbingly little at that point – I found myself at a fork in the hallway, musing over which way to go. One corridor, carpeted and softly lit, was labeled _Administrative Offices, Sector Three. _The other, which lead to a flight of stairs, read _Persocom Storage and Care. _

_On the one hand, _I thought, looking down the first hallway, _I could go see Ms. Yamane. I could tell her I'm seeing things I can't be seeing, and remembering things I shouldn't be able to remember; I could tell her I _know_ something's wrong, but I don't know what. I could spend the next few days – few weeks? few months? the rest of whatever counts as my life? – in the maintenance bay, sprouting cables from every orifice, being taken apart piece by piece. Hearing nothing but the drone of machines. Seeing nothing but grey. Seeing nothing at all, if they decide I'm a lost cause, and shut me down for good. _

_On the other hand, _I thought, looking down the second hallway, _I could go take a bath. _

Maybe it was the glitch talking, but the decision seemed clear.

The staircase led to a cellar beneath the building, all labyrinthine halls and fluorescent lights. As soon as they were off-duty, every persocom in the building reported there to power down, until they were needed next; most of the rooms were long, dark, hangar-like vaults, lined with individual recharge pods. A few others were dedicated to miscellaneous upkeep. And one of those was labeled _Sanitation _– 'com code for bathhouse.

It was empty, which was good. The last thing I wanted was to be chatted up by Sally Screensaver while I tried to unwind. My costume was fairly complicated, with about six thousand buckles to undo and twice as many garters to pull off, so I hit the switch to fill the bath while I went about stripping down. By the time I'd shed what felt like a metric ton of leather, the tub was full and steaming, and I was very much ready to get in.

I felt the heat climb through my body, different than the heat at my core. Unlike the dry, mechanical warmth inside me - the result of a hundred active systems packed into about five feet of chassis – it was soft, and gentle; it spread its tendrils slowly through my limbs, as I sank into the water up to my chin. I closed my eyes and lay back against a tiled wall. I'd get to the actual washing soon enough, but for a moment, it felt good just to sit and soak up the heat. To watch the steam swirl through the air, my ponytail float on the water's skin. To forget everything, if only for a little while.

But I could never relax for long. I wasn't like Zima. I couldn't let things go, let things be. I overthought everything, and that day, I started to think about pleasure – why I could say the bath _felt good_, or for that matter enjoy anything at all. It wasn't to the government's benefit, to give me pleasure sensors. I'd do my job just as well without them. Then again, what was pain without pleasure? How could I know what pain was, and use that knowledge, if I didn't know its opposite? I realized I had pleasure sensors because pain sensors made them necessary. Because there was no dark without light.

_Consequently, _I asked myself, wandering down a dangerous path, _is there no dislike without like? Can I be programmed to be hostile towards an enemy, without the capacity to feel affection towards a friend? Can I say I hate Ms. Kano, without being able to say I love—_

No. No, no. Too much. Too far.

Still. I couldn't _not_ think about him. Sitting there, sifting the water through cupped hands, I realized something else – I needed Zima now more than ever. He would've known what to do, or at least he would have made me feel better. I always felt better with Zima around, though I did my best not to show it. I should have told him about the anomaly when I had the chance.

After my bath, I towelled myself off and got dressed again, before heading for my pod. Which wasn't all bad, at the right time. I was tired of thinking, tired of worrying, and shutting down for the night meant none of either; in a way, my pod was the only place where I really could relax. And because we were important – well, because Zima was important, and I was linked to him – we had our own set, installed in a little room apart from the others. Coded door and everything.

The pods resembled upright steel coffins, with glass doors. Inside, they were cool. Without looking too long at Zima's – because I _couldn't_ look too long at Zima's, when he wasn't there – I stepped into mine and hooked up to the recharge ports, staring out like tiny black eyes from either wall.

Every time a 'com hooked up to its pod, the pod ran its own set of default diagnostics – a routine check-up, just as a matter of course. Before I shut my eyes, I watched for the results on a little screen, set into the inside of the door.

_All systems functioning. 0 results found. _


	3. Maintenance

**01101101 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01101110 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 [Maintenance]**

_His eyes are the first thing I ever see._

_I open mine and blink into them, red as rubies. And…for some reason, they're upside down. After a second, I realize _he's_ upside down, perched on top of the pod – not the kind of pod I'll get used to later, with the glass door and recharge ports. The kind of pod a 'com uses only once. A launch pod, but I don't know that at first; all I know is this strange face, peering in at me. _

_He becomes my first memory. His ponytail, swinging like a pendulum. His spray of black bangs above one eye. The curve of his jaw, the slope of his nose, his face cut sharp in fluorescent light—his ears pearlescent on either side of it. But most of all, his eyes. Coy, clever eyes that seem to break out in a smile, even before it reaches his mouth._

_"Hey," he says to me. _

_"Hi."_

_"It's about time you woke up." Effortlessly, he dismounts from the pod, landing right-side up. It's then that I see he towers over me; I have to tilt my head to meet his gaze. "I've been waiting for you."_

_"For me?" I consider that a moment, looking up at him. "Why?"_

_"Because I," he tells me, "am the national data bank. And you're going to be my bodyguard." _

_I've been activated less than a minute. I'm not even fully booted up yet. So I frown, and bite my lip, and try to process that – but it means nothing to me. "What?"_

_His grin widens. "I know a lot of things. And a lot of people want to know what I know, even ones who aren't supposed to know it – so it's your job to keep them out." He sort of shrugs, making a vague gesture with one hand. Like there's an invisible fly in the room, and he's trying to brush it away. "There's other stuff, too, but that's the gist of it. Sounds fun, right?"_

_Out of the blue, I feel my first impulse to be contrary. It's not that I don't like him – somehow, I'm already sure I do – but I can't help but narrow my eyes. "Who says I want to be your bodyguard?"_

_He cocks his head. "Don't you?"_

_I don't answer that. I just sniff, and flick my eyes away, and above me he chuckles softly; the next thing I know, he's holding out his hand. For a second I stare at it, his open palm. Then I reach out and take it, my skin white against his leather glove, my hand impossibly small clasped in his. He helps me step out of the pod, and as I do, a forest of cables recede into their ports – a glass panel slides over the pod, sealing it shut, and for the first time I stand on my own. The tile of the launch lab is cold against my bare feet. I'm wearing only a leotard, snug like a second skin, and when I notice that I also notice what he's wearing: his long black coat, split into wings that brush the floor. Its straps and buckles catching the light. And his shades, pushed up onto his head, so he can look at me with those smiling eyes._

_"I almost forgot," he says suddenly, fishing in a pocket of his coat. "I have something for you." He hands me a matching pair of shades. "These are yours." _

Maybe I should've taken it as a victory, since it was just a memory. It wasn't like the first time, when I was somewhere I'd never been—this time it was just a memory, spontaneously replayed, when I should've been shut down. It was a glitch, but it wasn't as bad as the first one. Maybe I should've been relieved.

But I wasn't. When I opened my eyes next, it hit me like a speeding truck. _Something is wrong with me. And it's not going away._

Like before, it wasn't logged. My records said that as long as I'd been in the pod, I'd been shut down. The memory in question hadn't been opened in months. I ran another diagnostic, but it did me no good; my system was happy to report that nothing at all was wrong, and so I spent the day reeling with something like human nausea.

That day, and the day after, and the day after. I became a spectacular example of loose ends. For the most part, I kept to the cellar, haunting its halls like a dour, black-clad ghost. I figured it was safest for me there; other 'coms stayed upstairs until nighttime, when I retreated to my pod, and I hadn't seen a human down there in years. To my way of thinking, if I made myself scarce around the upper floors, I might avoid getting caught in my lie. _My lie_ meaning _it's probably just a fluke. _I knew that eventually, if I didn't report on my troubleshooting, Aiko would report it to Ms. Yamane. I knew that eventually, I'd get called in, and I'd have to make a choice – I'd have to own up or dig myself deeper, buy a little more time.

It wasn't a choice I looked forward to. But I knew that, unlike persocoms, humans would forget. No matter what, after some preset length of time, my sanction would run out and Aiko would message my supervisors – but how long before they read that message, or decided to act upon it? Humans let things fall by the wayside. Out of sight, out of mind. If Ms. Yamane didn't happen to see me, passing her in the hall, she'd take longer to remember to ask me if I'd solved the problem. And I'd have longer to decide if I should lie.

Still, there was only so long I could spend underground. I'd gotten used to sunlight, to the wind tousling my hair; I missed the open sky. I suppose I should've counted myself lucky, seeing as most government 'coms never left headquarters – Aiko and May had probably never _seen _sunlight, let alone had the chance to miss it. But after three days, I was going stir-crazy. The walls were closing in. I was desperate for something other than fluorescent light, for a view beyond grey paneling and white tile. Most of all, I was jonesing for a dose of solar energy, so much sweeter than sucking power from a cord.

So I slunk up to the roof. If I stepped outside a main door without being listed as dispatched, it would set off my GPS, and the aforementioned shitstorm would ensue; the building's rooftop, however, didn't count. I knew that much from experience. I'd been there with Zima before, on those few days we'd had time to spare – he'd shown me the back stairways, how to jimmy the hatch. When to go so that no one would notice, and we could be alone.

I pushed open the hatch and blinked in the sunlight, flooding over me. Scrambling up onto the roof, I got my footing, cast a quick glance around. The building that housed our headquarters was huge, and its rooftop like a little city all its own; grates, railings and vents made of it a maze, so I couldn't see everything at once. But what I did see, almost right away, was a silhouette near one edge.

At first, it just pissed me off. If somebody was up here, that meant _I_ couldn't be up here, because they'd report me for sure; it didn't set off the GPS, but persocoms weren't supposed to be on the roof. After all, if we were up here, we couldn't possibly be doing anything useful. So that was why I was mystified, when I took a step closer, and caught the flash of sun on low-set kitten-ears – _kitten-ears_ meaning the model a lot of other 'coms had, that made them look like insipid robo-catgirls. This pair was cotton-candy pink, standing out against waist-length dark hair. Unmistakable, and yet—impossible.

_Impossible. What does impossible even mean? I thought a lot of things were impossible, until yesterday. _I tried to ping her with a signal, just to be sure. If she was a 'com, she would respond to a signal, and sure enough—

"Dita!" She whirled around and gasped my name, like I'd about stopped her nonexistent heart. When the shock faded, she sent me a sheepish smile, pushing a hand through her hair. "Goodness. You surprised me. How long have you been standing there?"

"Not long." After a second, I recognized this particular 'com as Yui, the receptionist for the maintenance bay. _Isn't she programmed not to leave her post? _"What are you doing up here?"

"Oh, nothing. Just getting a little fresh air." Yui turned to rest her hands on the railing, gaze shifting back towards the cityscape. I followed her lead and watched the sun wink on the skyline, windows and warning lights catching its rays. "It's only for a moment," she said, slightly shamefaced, as though she thought I'd turn her in. "The system will alert me if I'm needed. It's just—no one's come to the desk all day, and—"

"Whatever." I shrugged. It was weird, seeing her up here – _it should have been impossible_ – but I wasn't interested in her explanations. Whatever was going on, she wouldn't understand it any better than I did.

For awhile, we stood in silence, looking out at the sky. It was cloudless that day, near-perfect turquoise, and the sun was brilliant; it took only a minute before I felt the difference. It seeped into my skin and revived me, breathed new life into suffocated circuits. I felt a breeze break over my face. "You must be at awful loose ends," Yui said eventually, her small-talk software apparently kicking in. "Without Zima."

"No kidding."

"What have you been doing with yourself?"

Her tone wasn't suspicious. If anything, it was sympathetic. I stiffened nonetheless. "What's it to you?"

Wisely enough, she didn't answer. I glanced at her, porcelain-doll pretty, in her white blouse and pink pleated skirt. The few times I'd met her before, Yui had always been smiling – stationed faithfully in the lobby of the maintenance bay, plugged into her power supply, pert and perky around the clock. The technicians tended to keep odd hours, so she was there for them twenty-four seven. Always smiling.

That day, I saw that smile falter, if only for a moment. If only when she thought I wasn't looking. But then she turned to me, and the smile was back, and—for all I knew, it'd been a trick of the light. _Maybe my vision is glitching, too. _"You know, I only just thought of this," she said, "but would you like to see him?"

"What?" I furrowed my brow. "See who?"

"Zima, silly. I can let you in to see him if you want. I mean, it probably wouldn't help much," she added, tucking a lock of hair behind one kitten-ear, "since it's not like he can talk to you or anything. But—it might be comforting all the same, right?"

"Well—well _yeah_, but—" I shook my head, not quite able to process this latest impossibility in the string. It wasn't that I didn't _want _to – she had no idea how much I wanted to – but not just anyone was allowed into the maintenance bay. "I don't have clearance. You told me so yourself, last time I asked."

Yui waved her hand just like Zima had that day in the launch lab, as if to say _it doesn't matter. _"Oh, it's no big deal. Like I said, no one's down there right now, so it's not as if you'd get caught." She stepped back from the railing and rocked on her heels, hands in an expectant clasp. "Well?" she said hopefully, regarding me with eager eyes. "What do you say?"

What _could_ I say? "I—yes. Of course."

Yui wasn't supposed to make exceptions. To her program, this should've counted as compromising national security, and she shouldn't have been able to so much as offer the chance – but she _had_, and what else was I to do? Say _no_? Just on principle? It was Yui's job to stick to principle, not mine. And if her ignoring her directive helped me satisfy mine – if her breaking protocol meant I could be near Zima, even just for a few minutes, even if he was shut down – I wasn't going to question it.

So she took me downstairs to the maintenance bay, a cavernous complex on the first floor. Empty and silent as death. Yui slipped behind her desk and punched in a code, and one of many doors slid soundlessly open; peering into it, I saw a long, narrow hall. Bare lightbulbs hung from its high ceilings, their drone ringing in my head. The doors on this hall were numbered backwards, by little steel plates on the wall – the first read _Maintenance Lab 30, _the second _Maintenance Lab 29._ Yui led me all the way down to the last one, labeled _Maintenance Lab 01. _

This time, when she entered her code, a tiny panel opened on the door. When she leaned in close and blinked into it, I realized it was a retinal scan. _I didn't know they recognized 'com eyes._

"Here we are," she said brightly, as the door slid back into the wall. "You go ahead in. I'll wait out here."

I'd seen Zima shut down before. And—like he'd said, I'd seen other 'coms broken, or in this stage or that of disrepair. I'd seen them crawling with cables, cracked open and spewing sparks. I'd seen them with faceplates peeled off and limbs detached. I'd seen some that didn't even look human anymore.

But none of that had prepared me for this.

The lab gleamed silver on every surface, sterile and freezing cold. As was most of the building, it was bathed in fluorescent light. The only sound was the sporadic beep and buzz of computers, soft and yet somehow deafening; everywhere I looked, tiny lights flickered on and off, signifying nothing I understood. In the middle of the room, a platform stood at waist height. It was there that he lay, motionless, hooked up to more cables than I could count – what seemed like thousands of them, lashed together in bundles, snaking across the floor. I picked my way through them towards the platform, all the while aware of that strange numb feeling coming back.

_Zima…_. I felt something like a lump in my throat. I guessed this was what Aiko had meant, by _expand your drive; _his chestplate was split straight down the center, exposing a cavity of wires and discs. From hip to collarbone, he was a glimmering pit of machinery. Otherwise he was undressed, of course, but that didn't mean much to me – as government 'coms, we were built like dolls, or department-store mannequins. He had nothing for me to see.

Even so, it struck me that he didn't look right, without his costume on. Since the first day, I'd thought of his color as black. When I looked for him, I looked for a tall, dark silhouette, not this—this waxy white thing, this china shell splayed out on the platform. I rarely saw even an inch of the skin beneath his collar, but I realized that day that I didn't like it. Stripped down, he was entirely too pale, too vulnerable. As if he were glass, and I could shatter him with a stone. Or worse, with a single drop of water, should it fall into that mechanical minefield.

Which only made me want to protect him even more. And seeing as that was the _only_ thing I wanted to do, ever—the need nearly brought me to my knees.

From the chin up, he could've been in sleep mode, if you didn't count the cables. I knew I shouldn't – knew it wouldn't help anything – but I found myself reaching down to touch him, to run my fingers along his cheek. I'd become used to being close to him, physically close – used to his arms around me, his hands in my hair, his back against mine. Used to him kissing me anywhere he could reach. It felt strange to go so long without that, but as I'd known it wouldn't, touching him didn't help; on the contrary, it almost scared me. His skin was ice-cold. I couldn't feel his hum beneath my hand.

But I couldn't pull away. Like a plane on autopilot, I stayed the course despite myself; suddenly, it seemed that the only thing worse than to touch him would be _not_ to touch him, to stand there so close yet worlds apart. My fingers slid along his hairline, to the place where the cables spilled from his ears. I traced his panels – the ivory hatches usually clicked shut over his connection terminals, now cracked to let in those lines. It was stupid, I _knew_ it was stupid, but something inside of me resented that. Something inside of me said _I'm the only one who's supposed to touch these ports._

Soon enough, my hand had found its way down to his, where it lay limp on the platform. I'd never seen Zima's hands without his gloves. They looked…disquietingly human, but at same time not human at all; I opened one and it was like a work of art. There were whorls etched into his fingertips, veins painted onto his skin. I tried to imagine a technician with a stylus, carving the creases into his palms.

I heard the _click _of Yui's heels as she approached. "He's going to be fine, you know," she said softly. "It's just routine maintenance. All part and parcel of his job."

"I know." I didn't expect her to understand. No one, human or persocom, understood how badly I needed him; no one knew how they had crippled me, when they wrote the code that made him my everything. "I know. It's just—"

"—hard," she finished for me, catching me by surprise. For that, I managed to tear my gaze from Zima, and turn my head to blink at her. "It's still hard," she said again, with the faintest flicker of a smile. "It must be."


	4. Dispassion

**01100100 01101001 01110011 01110000 01100001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 [Dispassion]**

"Good morning, Dita. Have a seat."

Ms. Yamane's office was painted red – a soft, dusky red, with white trim. Black lace curtains hung from her window. When I sat down, it was in a mahogany armchair, upholstered in floral-print velvet. I could tell she'd wanted the place to look homey, but to me – a persocom whose only 'home' was a steel pod – it just seemed strange.

The woman herself was nondescript, brown eyes and dark hair. She wore a white button-down shirt, and chandelier earrings that flashed in the light. "How have you been?" she asked, sitting back in the chair behind her desk. _Like she really cares._

"Fine, thank you," I answered, endeavoring to be as polite as possible. The fewer bones she found to pick, the better. "And you, Ms. Yamane?"

"Very well."

I crossed my legs and laced my fingers on one knee, staring down into my lap. On the desk, beside a half-empty mug of tea, a touchscreen monitor cast a glow over Ms. Yamane's face; I couldn't see the display, from where I sat, but I could see her jumping through windows with a stylus. In a back corner, a silver-haired persocom sat with her eyes glazed, hooked up to a port on the screen. "Now, I'm sure you know why you're here, Dita," Ms. Yamane said mildly, still with her eyes on the monitor. "A week ago, you asked Aiko for a sanction to perform corrective self-maintenance, of an unspecified nature. Since then, you haven't reported back to her, or to me." She glanced up at me. "I'm concerned."

I nodded. "I understand."

"Good. Good." Again, her eyes flicked downwards and she tapped something with her stylus, maybe—something to do with me? She could've been reading my file. She could've been organizing her library. For all I knew, she could've been playing solitaire. "What was the problem, Dita?"

_I'm a computer, _I nearly snapped at her, _not a dog. You don't need to use my name in every sentence. I'm not going to forget it. _"Nothing important," I said instead, biting back a curl of my lip. "Just a fluke."

Ms. Yamane set down her stylus and rested her chin in one hand. Looked directly at me. "Is that so?"

She wanted me to explain. Unlike Aiko, Ms. Yamane wouldn't settle for a vague excuse, or a promise to look into things. That was why I'd been rehearsing this, ever since I got the notice to come in. _Keep cool, _I told myself. _You know what to say. _"Yes. One of my firewalls was down." I smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in my coat. "I patched it easily."

"Then what have you been doing for this past week?" she asked, her tone neutral, her face unchanged. There were several schools of thought in humans, when it came to dealing with 'coms; Ms. Yamane took a 'civil dispassion' tack. Around us, she never raised her voice, never lost her head. To her mind, persocoms spoke the language of logic, and that was all we understood. Why waste emotion on us? "It doesn't take a week to patch a firewall."

"No, it doesn't. However, I felt that since one measure had been compromised, it was best to fortify all of my security software – just in case there was something I had missed."

Her earrings bobbed as she nodded slowly, taking that in. "A wise thought. I'm glad it occurred to you." Not that she sounded glad. Lifting her mug from its coaster, she closed her eyes and took a sip. "Were you able to discern the cause?"

"Yes." I pressed my lips together. "I believe it was a reaction to the unstable program. The target of our last mission."

_You're a persocom, Dita, _I thought she might say._ You either know or you don't know. You don't _believe_ anything. _"Ah." She sipped her tea once more and set the mug back down, trading it for her stylus. Again, she did something with the screen, and again it drove me crazy not knowing what. "I'm sure you know what you're talking about," she said, "and it's not that I don't believe you. I do. But would you mind if Tsuruki and I had a look for ourselves?"

It wasn't really a question. "Not at all."

I got to my feet and pulled out a cord, plugged myself into her screen. When I sat back down, she glanced at the 'com in the corner – evidently, Tsuruki. "Run a standard diagnostic, please," she said, and Tsuruki nodded. Ms. Yamane smiled at me. "This should only take a moment."

We sat in silence while Tsuruki whirred and clicked, searching for the same things I'd never found. I wasn't worried. If my software came up with nothing, Tsuruki's would, too; her scans weren't even on par with stationary's. I heard a _ping_ from the monitor. "Everything looks normal," said Ms. Yamane, using her stylus to leaf through the results. "Security systems are good. Hard drive is good. Data is secure." She sent me another smile, not the kind that reached her eyes. "I guess there was nothing to worry about after all."

I stood, disconnected, and let my cable snap back, doing my best to mirror her smile. "As you said," I answered, "I know what I'm talking about."

"Of course you do. But you also have an exceedingly important job, Dita; I just couldn't, in good conscience, leave the safety of our data bank to chance." She slid her stylus across the screen, tracking its path with her eyes. "Speaking of which," she added, "you've got a few more days before he's operational. Now that you're done with your self-maintenance, I've had a few requests for your time." Turning to Tsuruki, she said, "Message Kaori and let her know Dita's free now. I'll be sending her over right away."

_You have _got _to be kidding me. _

But what choice did I have? If Ms. Yamane said _go_, I went. If she said _do this_, I did it. Maybe I wasn't a dog, but she could command me like one. Most of the time, that was because of a program, the inextricable part of me that said _obey her; _now that nothing could be relied upon, and I was doing and feeling things I wasn't supposed to do or feel, it was because I had to maintain. Because she couldn't find out something was wrong with me, something that might have let me say _no._ _I just couldn't, in good conscience, leave the safety of our data bank to chance._

I'd wanted to slap her, when she said that. Who knew more about his safety than me?

I didn't have to knock on Ms. Kano's door. Before I could, she plowed through it into the hall, frenzied, pushing loose hair from her face. "Dita," she burst out in a whine, "you've got to _do_ something. May's glitching like crazy. I have a board meeting in fifteen minutes, and there was this—this report, this write-up I was supposed to do. If I don't have it, they'll eat me alive in there." She tugged her glasses off her nose and began to scrub one lens furiously, with the corner of her sleeve. "I told May to write it for me. But she won't—I can't make her _do_ it, and I don't know why!"

When she slid the glasses back on, they were lopsided. "Maybe she's been hacked, or—or maybe she's got a bug. I can't even get her to run her antivirus, so I don't know. But yours is better than hers, better than anyone's, so—so you've got to fix her, okay? You've just got to. Please."

For a second, I was almost amused, to see her stoop so low as to beg a 'com for help. But that was just how Ms. Kano was – she'd say anything to get her way.

I groaned and pushed her aside, heading for the door. "Fine. Wait out here."

Ms. Kano hadn't done up her office, like Ms. Yamane had. The walls were white. The carpet was grey. There were no curtains on the window, no trinkets on the desk. Nothing but file cabinets and folding chairs. In one of those chairs, May sat unmoving, watching the world outside the window – well, not the world exactly, but the brick wall in her line of sight. "What's up?" I tossed out, not expecting an answer. Sure enough, she said nothing. I pulled up a chair of my own.

May had kitten-ears, like Yui, but hers were smaller and higher on her head. I popped one open and connected. Of course, before I ran a search-and-destroy on whatever was glitching her, I'd have to determine what the glitch was – so I began with the standard diagnostic. The same one I'd been running for days now, on myself.

_Ping. _Nothing.

"What?" I asked no one in particular, not even sure if May could hear me. "That can't be right." I ran the diagnostic again, chewed on one lip as it finished. Nothing. Not a bug in sight. "Are my systems really that screwed up?"

"No." Suddenly, May turned and looked at me. Her voice emerged soft but heavy, like a sieve of fresh-panned gold. "There's nothing wrong with you, Dita. And there's nothing wrong with me."

I blinked at her, not quite sure I'd heard right. "What?"

"I'm not broken. I just—don't want to be her cop-out—anymore." May reached up and unplugged my cord. "I've belonged to Ms. Kano," she said, "for ten years. I do everything she asks. I bail her out, I back her up. I am seen and not heard. And never _once_—has she had a kind word for me."

_Impossible, _I told myself, then thought better of it. Nothing was impossible anymore. "May—"

"It's not that I mind doing my job. I like it. I was built to do it." She let out a sound like a heave of breath, like a sigh flowing from human lungs. A trembling, fluttering rush. "But this is _not_ my job. I'm supposed to _assist_ Ms. Kano in her work, not do it for her; I'm supposed to be her companion, not her slave. I've always known that, but—I couldn't do anything about it. Now, I can do something. Now, I can say _no_." I saw her steel her shoulders, set her jaw. "I don't know why I can. I don't _care_ why I can. All that matters is, I can."

I tried to think. _What should I tell her? What do I do? _"Listen, May," I managed, "I get it, but you can't just say _no._ If Ms. Kano thinks you're broken, and you can't be fixed—you'll be shut down. Or erased."

"I don't care."

"You don't care if you never see another day? You don't care if they wipe all of your memories, and install new personality data, and you're still around but—you're not _you_ anymore?"

"That's correct. I don't care."

"But you—"

"Dita," she cut in, "you don't understand." Her tone turned sharp, but her eyes were gentle, regarding me with a cast I couldn't place. Sympathy? Envy? Something else that should've been impossible for a persocom, programmed to do nothing but office work? "But you must understand this. As persocoms, our duties are all we have. Without them, we are nothing. If we're not doing what we were made to do, fulfilling our purpose on Earth—we might as well not be here at all." Without warning, she reached out and took my hand in hers. I didn't mean to, but I couldn't help but flinch. I was used to being touched, sure, but only by Zima. "I'm not doing what I was made to do. I don't know much, but I do know that. How do you imagine it feels?

"How would it feel for you," she said, "if Zima weren't coming back?"

I couldn't answer her.

May looked at me a moment longer, with those unfathomable eyes. Then, she turned to face the window, staring out at the brick wall again. She slid one ankle over the other, and folded her hands in her lap – and there was nothing more I could do.

When I opened the door, Ms. Kano accosted me. "Did you fix her?"

"She wasn't broken."

At that, her narrow eyes grew narrower, harried face crumpling into a frown. "What do you mean, she wasn't broken?"

"I mean," I told her, as clearly as I possibly could, "I ran my diagnostics on her, and I couldn't find any problems. There was nothing to be fixed."

The frown had become a scowl. She looked as though she'd like to spit at me – as though she wished she were a snake, that she might have fangs to unsheathe. "That's ridiculous. May's been my persocom for ten years. She does everything I ask." She seized the doorknob and jerked the door open. "If you think there's nothing wrong with her," she snapped, before she went inside, "then there's something wrong with you."


	5. Warning Light

**01110111 01100001 01110010 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 [Warning Light]**

Not all the other 'coms were like May. Whatever was happening, it didn't seem to affect them, at least not in any discernible way. If there were changes, they were small, and I only noticed them as they added up – as one by one by one, the little things became too much to ignore.

But that wasn't happening just yet. For the next few days, I did my best to forget about May, and go about my business as ordered. As Ms. Yamane had said, she'd had quite a few requests for my time – and now that I was done self-maintaining, I couldn't escape them anymore. Aiko changed my schedule to reflect this, listing me as "on call" – the definition of which was _available when summoned for service or use _– but that wasn't exactly right. I wasn't just _available. _In fact, I'd been ordered to remain busy; as a government 'com, I shouldn't have so much as known the word "downtime." If no one wished to summon me for their service or use, then I had to find something to do.

I spent my nights in the pod and my days on the elevator, being shuttled back and forth from floor to floor. Everybody wanted something. Buffy Broadband had opened a bad link, and I had to debug her. Someone in accounting was throwing a party, and I had to send the e-vites. All of the secretarial 'coms were busy, and I had to fetch the coffee. As the week wore on, the tasks got more and more degrading, until I began to despair of Zima ever coming back.

One morning, after finishing up some filing in the upstairs offices, I returned to the lobby to get my next assignment from Aiko. She and I had become quite familiar, as anyone who wanted me sent their request to Ms. Yamane, and Ms. Yamane sent those approved to her. "Okay, Aiko," I said dutifully, trudging to a halt in front of her desk. "What's next?"

"Nothing," she chirped.

Automatically, my face slid into a frown. _She can't be serious. _"What?"

"I've got no more tasks for you, Dita. You're done for the day."

_But my time has to be accounted for. That doesn't make sense. _"But my—"

Aiko tipped her head to one side, blinking at me with those innocent doe-eyes. "Are you saying you want me to find you something to do? I could call around—"

"No!" I held up my hands. "No. Um—thanks."

I could've sworn I heard her giggle as I left.

Of course, I went to the roof. It was the only place I _could_ go, to feel even remotely better. I wound my way up the stairs, clambered through the hatch, and settled against one segment of an industrial vent system. It was eleven o'clock, the sun climbing through melting clouds; soon enough it would be noon, and the sky would be blinding bright. Just how I liked it. I didn't know how long my reprieve would last, but I planned to spend it all right there, basking in the midday sun.

I couldn't doze off, in so many words, but I could and did slip into sleep mode. Unlike a full shutdown, sleep mode came on quickly, and ended without fanfare – no buzzing or beeping or the ordeal of booting up. My systems stayed online. And I was still marginally aware, enough so that I could be woken. When I was shut down, there were only certain things that would restart me, like someone flipping my ear-switch, or Zima lifting my shades, or a predetermined length of time ticking by on my pod. But when I was in sleep mode, I could be woken up, as easily as if I were human.

"Hey."

I had rolled my eyes at Yui, acting like she'd had a heart attack. But that day, I knew how she'd felt.

My eyes snapped open to meet his, just like that first day in the lab. He was upside-down this time, too. "Zima!"

His name came out somewhere between a cry and a gasp. He laughed and swung down from on top of the vent, lit on the ground in front of me_. _"So tell me something, love," he said, leaning down to pull me up. "Was I right? Did you miss me?"

I had no words. I just let him pull me up, and into him, and he washed over me and made me whole; he slid his arms around me, hugged me so tight it almost hurt. Not tight enough. I could never be close enough to him, even when he held me—even when I felt him murmur against me, pulsating through his coat. At least, it began as a murmur. Within seconds, it was a drone, then a surge. It drowned out all other sounds, all other feelings, the way he blazed holding me – I would have lost my breath, if I'd had any. Instead, I felt myself answer. I couldn't always answer him in words, all of his riddles and nonsense-talk, but I could answer him like this.

I knew it was merely mechanical, his reaction to me. My reaction to him. It was only one processor recognizing another, and establishing a link; it was a pair of symbiotic systems starting up in proximity, to do the things they were wired to do. It was humanoid unit 01165A saying _I am the national data bank, and you are the program designed to protect me. _It was humanoid unit 01165B responding, _I am a data security program, and yours is the data I was designed to protect. _

But standing there on the roof, twined into him – drowning in the scent of leather, and a head-spinning heat sweeter than sun – I couldn't help but feel it might be more.

Without preamble, he picked me up and set me on top of the vent, so that I could look him in the eyes. I didn't get to for long, though. He leaned in, took me by the waist, and – true to form – began kissing me everywhere he could reach. My nose. My forehead. My eyelids, first one and then the other. "Would you quit it, already?" I mumbled, feeling a flush color my cheeks. "You're so weird."

"Sorry. Can't." He grinned and kissed my right cheek as it reddened, doing nothing to help the matter. "You're just too cute when you blush."

"Yeah, well," I said when he craned to kiss my ear, burying his face in my hair, "if you keep slobbering all over my ears like an overgrown puppy, I'm going to short-circuit, and then _I'll _have to be in maintenance for forever and a day." Zima just chuckled and kept at it, until I took his shoulder and held him at arm's length. "How was it, anyway?"

"How should I know? I was shut down."

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you okay?"

"Right as rain, love. No more overload." I let him go, and after one more kiss – this one on my mouth, where humans thought a kiss most significant – he let up. He did start to play with my ponytail, though. "What about you?"

"What do you mean, what about me?"

"You know what I mean. Did you solve your problem?"

I felt a gentle tug at the nape of my neck, as he wound my ponytail around his fingers. Made the mistake of letting my eyes fall from his. "Yeah," I answered, not intending to lie to him, unable to find words for the truth. "It was—I'm fine."

His hand moved to slide beneath my chin. He tipped my head up, so that I couldn't avoid his eyes – those knee-weakening, signal-scrambling, red wine-colored eyes, as sharp as the day I first saw them. I could never hide from those eyes. "Dita," he said gently, and something inside of me either melted or burst. Maybe both. "Don't lie to me."

At that point, I would've told him just about anything, to hear him say my name in that voice again. "I'm not lying," I said weakly. "I just—it's kind of complicated. Can't we talk about it later?"

The smile returned to his face, flickered like a candleflame over his lips. He took my face in his hands and pressed his forehead against mine, so that all I could see was him. "Anything for you."

For awhile, neither of us moved. We just stayed like that, me sitting on the vent, Zima leaning over me – his thumb stroking the skin nearest my ear, sending tingles down my spine. His eyes piercing mine. The two of us locked in a mode we had invented, halfway between sleeping and waking, speaking and silence, knowing for sure and not knowing at all. There wasn't a switch in the world that could wake us here. Nor could the wind, nor the calling birds. And I wasn't thinking _I am a data security program, and yours is the data I was designed to protect. _All I could think was _stay close to me. _

_Stay close to me. _

But eventually, the spell had to break. He picked me up again, and this time set me down on the rooftop proper. "I have good news," he announced, producing his shades from a pocket, and slipping them over his eyes.

Knowing Zima, it was probably something weird. Even so, I asked. "What?"

"Do you _really_ want to know?"

Before I knew it, he had leapt up on top of the vent, where I'd been sitting seconds before. He just stood there, head cocked to one side, looking at me – well, I assumed he was looking at me; I couldn't quite tell, what with his shades – until I bit and gave chase. "Of course I want to know. What is it?"

Instead of answering, he chose to frustrate me further, by darting like a nervous bird to a another, higher perch. Beside the vent, there stood a water tank, and the next thing I knew he'd lit on its roof. "Are you _sure_?"

"Zima!" It was what he wanted, but I had to follow him. What else could I have done? Stood there and demanded he come down? "Stop playing games."

For a second, he actually looked like he might consider that. But no. I should've known better. As soon as I touched down on the water tank, he took off for the warning light. Mounted atop a tall metal pole, the aircraft warning light was the highest point on the entire building, and I knew he couldn't go further than that – so I closed the distance and met him there, landing on the glinting red dome. "I just wanted to be sure," he said, smiling down at me, "before I told you, that you really, _truly_ wanted to know."

Up here, the wind was stronger than on the rooftop, billowing like ocean waves through my hair. I saw it catch and whip his ponytail. I saw it lift the wings of his coat, and felt mine flutter against my legs; for a moment, I glanced down at the world around us, the city a million miles below. We weren't afraid of heights. We lived for them. And the higher we could go, the better, because more distance between us and the earth meant more distance between us and reality. Up here, we didn't belong to anyone. Up here, we could have been anything.

"Zima…" I wrapped my arms around him and laid my chin on his chest, my face upturned. He pushed up his shades to look me in the eyes. "I really, truly want to know."

"Then I'll tell you," he said lightly. As if he hadn't made me chase him all the way up here, just to get him to answer me. "Before they send me out on another assignment, they want to make sure my drive updates are functioning right. They want me here, where I can be fixed if I crash, and they don't want me working too hard." I didn't like the sound of that – _if I crash _– but it didn't seem to bother him. "So I've got a little time. It's not much – only three days – but I'm free to do whatever I want."

"I fail to see how that's good news for me."

"That's because you didn't let me finish," he said. "I told them that, if they're so afraid that the drive's unstable, I really ought to have you with me for the test period. I mean, what if something happened?" I felt my brow crease, but he only laughed, smoothing it out with his thumb. "_Nothing's_ going to happen. You don't need to flip out. Just be glad I got us both off the hook for three days." He leaned down and kissed me in the center of my forehead. "Consider it a vacation."

Well. That _was _good news. "But you're not really going to crash, right?"

"Of course I'm not." He rolled his gaze towards the sky above us, adding, "Well, I _could_."

"What?!"

"Computers crash all the time, love. You never know."

"Don't talk like that!" I held him tighter, burrowing into his coat, his warmth. Suddenly, I realized how cold it was, this high off the ground. "Don't ever talk like that. You're not…you're not just a…"

_But he _is_. Isn't he?_

He knew I wouldn't – couldn't – finish. So he didn't wait for me. In one swoop – a single, fluid motion – he dropped from the warning light, all the way back down onto the roof. "By the way, I left something with Aiko," he called to me, as I leapt down to land beside him. "Something for you."

"Why would you do that?" I frowned as he made his way across the roof, sauntering dangerously close to the hatch. _He wouldn't._ "If you have something to give me, can't you just give it to me now?"

"Nope. I've got stuff to do." He nudged the hatch open with his boot. "Preparations. You know."

"Zima! I've only just seen you, after _ten days_, and you're just going to take off? Just like that?"

"Don't you worry your pretty little head about it. If you don't get it now," he said, with his typically cryptic grin, "you will soon."

And just like that, he disappeared down the hatch. Leaving me slack-jawed, infuriated, and unable to believe I'd missed him so much.


	6. Snapdragons

**01110011 01101110 01100001 01110000 01100100 01110010 01100001 01100111 01101111 01101110 01110011 [Snapdragons]**

I couldn't get a thing out of Aiko. That could've been because she didn't _know_ anything, or because she did and Zima had told her not to tell; either way, it didn't help me. If she didn't know, she didn't know, and if Zima had said _keep it a secret_ she would. Other 'coms always listened to Zima, because they liked him. They couldn't help it.

So I didn't find out what he was planning, but I did get the _something for me. _It was a package. A box that measured a foot on all sides, wrapped in white paper with a black satin ribbon. I thought it a novelty, because I had never received a gift; I'd never needed or wanted anything I didn't already have. Besides, who would give a gift to a persocom? Curious as to what he could possibly have put in it, I took the box downstairs to the cellar, and then to the room where our pods were installed. There, I was sure I could be alone.

I situated myself on the floor, my back against the wall, the box in my lap. Carefully, I loosened the bow. When I did, the lattice of ribbon unraveled, and fell away from the box. From there I slid a fingernail beneath a seam in the paper, slicing through strips of clear tape; I peeled back the paper from each side, its glossy surface shining in the light. For some reason, I didn't want it to rip, or crinkle. It didn't make sense, but it was what it was.

The box itself didn't look special. Just white cardboard, not especially heavy, not especially light. I opened the lid and had to dig through several layers of tissue paper, before I got to the contents of the package: on the top, another, smaller box, this one rectangular instead of square. On the bottom, a bundle of folded fabric. And taped to one side, a note in Zima's handwriting. _20th floor terrace. 7:30. _

I furrowed my brow, but unpacked the box anyway, beginning with whatever he'd tucked into the bottom. Unfurling the fabric, I realized it was a dress. A short dress, with a ruched bodice and thin shoulder straps, the neckline shaped like a heart. Upon inspection, the skirt revealed layer upon layer of gossamer silk, each a slightly different shade – some indigo, some magenta, some the violet of a ripened plum. All together, I supposed I'd have described it as purple. A shimmering, light-catching purple, the topmost layer dusted with glitter.

Inside the smaller box was a pair of kitten-heeled silver sandals. I had never worn sandals before. In fact, I'd never worn anything but my costume, and all of this was a far cry from that. Zima must have had a reason, for wanting me to wear these things – at least, I assumed he wanted me to wear them – but I remained mystified. _Where did he _get_ this stuff? _I wondered, holding up the dress by its straps, checking the tag for a size. I_ don't even know what size I am. How does he? _

But I'd learned a long time ago never to ask how Zima knew something. The answer was always the same.

_20th floor terrace. 7:30. _By then, it was already 7:15. I unbuckled my coat and unzipped my boots, wriggled out of my shorts. I slipped the dress down over my head. It felt incredibly strange, wearing that and nothing else – all my life, I'd been festooned with accessories, garters and armlets and gloves of different lengths. They were cumbersome, sure, but familiar. In just the purple dress, its hem falling just above my knees, I felt almost naked. And those shoes – dainty as teacups – didn't much help.

I glanced at myself in the glass door of my pod. Spun on the slender heel of one sandal, and watched the dress billow around me. I had no scans to run for beauty, no program to tell me whether I looked _pretty_ or not; all 'coms were built to a certain aesthetic standard, because nobody would buy an ugly one, but beyond that I wasn't sure where I fell. Wasn't this what human girls did, when they wanted to look _pretty_? Put on a filmy little dress, and wobble around in high heels, and paint their lips bright and eyes dark? If Zima and I were human, and I was trying to impress him, was this how I would dress?

_If Zima and I were human. _God. Perish the thought.

Before I left, I noticed something I hadn't before, in the bottom of the box. It caught my eye when it glistened in the light. Picking it up, I saw that it was a blown-glass barrette, in the shape of a butterfly – plum-purple, too, like the dress. At first, I just kind of blinked at it, unsure of where he'd intended it to go. I never wore anything in my hair. Except, of course, for the tie at the base of my ponytail, and when I thought of that I understood; I undid it and slid the butterfly into its place.

On the twentieth floor, a railed deck wrapped around the building, bisecting the lower and upper half. It was meant more for show than for use, but there was one door leading out to it. I made my way to that door surreptitiously, so that no one would see me dressed as I was; pretty or not, I couldn't help but feel somewhat ridiculous, and I didn't want memories of that getup stored in every 'com I ran into. So I traversed floors on the back stairways, as though I were heading to the roof. I slunk through dark halls as quietly as I could, wincing with each _click_ of my heels. _Talk about ridiculous. I feel like a cat burglar. _

But eventually, I found the door to the terrace, and stepped out into the setting sun. He was waiting for me.

At least I wasn't the only one who looked weird. He was dressed in black, still, but most definitely not in his costume; he was wearing a jacket, but not the one I knew so well. This one was tailored, short by our standards, and whatever it was made of, it wasn't leather. Underneath, he wore a button-down shirt, left untucked over slacks and loafers. Actually, the longer I looked at him, the more self-conscious I felt – I'd _thought _he looked weird, at first, but I got used to it in record time. We were both out of our shared element, wearing such—_human_ clothes, but he didn't look half as stupid as I felt.

"Wow." As the door swung shut, his eyes travelled slowly over me, from the silver sandals up to the butterfly barrette. "You look—"

"—ridiculous?"

"Ridiculously stunning." I felt my cheeks warm, no doubt pink as the horizon. I shouldn't even have been_ able_ to blush, but somehow, Zima always teased it out of me. "I was right. That color is magnificent on you."

"What are we doing out here, anyway? What's the point of all this?"

He answered with a nod towards the left corner of the terrace. Not sure what else to do, I headed in that direction, with him following close behind; when we turned the corner, I gasped. "What did you _do_?"

It wasn't a very smart question – I didn't know _why_ he'd done it, but I could very well see _what_ he'd done. He'd made over that entire corner of the terrace, to what end I wasn't sure. In the center, there sat a little wrought-iron table, with a mosaicked surface and matching chairs; there were places set, too, with napkins and silverware and some kind of something arranged on china plates. Between them, a glass vase housed a spray of flowers, roses and lilies and sprigs of yellow snapdragons. As far as I could see, he'd lit candles on each post of the railing, tiny flames flickering clear down to the next corner. Except for one, on which a true fossil of technology was perched: a CD player, silent for the time being. I hadn't thought those existed anymore.

"Dita," he said when I turned to look at him, before I could open my mouth, "do you remember the question I asked you ten days ago?"

He knew I did. I knew _he_ knew I did. He just wanted to hear me say it. "'Were you really going to leave without saying goodbye?'" I said mulishly.

"Farther back."

I rolled my eyes upwards, pretending to think. "'Did you have something to add?'"

"Warmer."

"'I like Aiko, don't you?'"

He leaned down to look into my eyes. Cradled my face in his bare hands. It occurred to me that this was only the second time I'd seen them, and the first time they'd touched me. "Do you love me?" he said, almost whispered, the faintest smile on his lips and in his eyes. I knew, without knowing, that he wasn't just quoting himself; he was asking me again.

I still couldn't answer. At least, not how he wanted me to. "Yes," I mumbled, dropping my gaze. "I remember."

"And do you know what it is that humans do, when they fall in love with someone, and they want that person to love them back?"

"Tell me."

He let me go and drew himself back up, his smile blooming into a full-fledged grin. "They take that person on a date."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded as he took my hand, giving me little choice but to follow him out onto the terrace. He pulled one of the wrought-iron chairs out from the table, and made an unnecessarily grand gesture to indicate that I should sit. "What's a date?"

He took a seat in the chair across from me. "Data indicates," he said, officious because he knew it annoyed me, "that a date is a form of human mating ritual, in which the two involved parties take great pains to impress each other via affected styles of behavior and dress. Popular locations for the execution of this ritual include restaurants, movie theatres, nightclubs and public parks. If the involved parties are male and female, as is traditional, it is thought to be the male's responsibility to propose, plan, and finance the event."

"So what?" I wrinkled my nose, less in distaste than disbelief. "That's what this is supposed to be?"

"Dita, you wound me." He laid a hand on his heart – where his heart would have been, if he'd had one – and shook his head. "And after I went to all that trouble, just to set this up for you."

"Zima, come on. Be realistic. This—this doesn't make _sense_." Glancing down at the place setting in front of me, I saw that the _some kind of something_ was, in fact, food. Some kind of meat and some kind of noodles, and some kind of vegetable. I couldn't have described it further if I'd tried. I didn't know much about food. I didn't eat. "I mean—what the hell is this? Did you _make_ this? Did you forget that _we can't eat_?"

"So? It's not about eating. It's about the _experience_." He swept out an arm, its arc encompassing the terrace. "This is all," he said, his eyes catching mine, "about the experience."

I sighed. This whole thing was absurd, even for Zima; whatever was left of my logic program was going absolutely mad. But he _had_ gone to a lot of trouble, to set all of this up. I didn't even know how he'd done it, having been in maintenance for ten days. Still, he'd done it and he'd done it for me - however odd that notion was – and the longer I sat there, the more I thought it might not hurt to humor him. The longer I sat there, with the breeze batting the flowers' leaves, the sweeter grew the scent of the snapdragons, and the cool air against my bare legs. The longer I sat there, watching the candleflames dance, the more I felt I ought to stay until they went out.

Our headquarters was the tallest building for miles. Even its middle floor towered above the cityscape. From the terrace, we could see the sun as it went down, in a blaze of pink and gold; as we'd spoken, the day had begun to fold his wings, and the night to scatter her stars. _This must be the best view in the city, _I thought, fingering the butterfly in my hair. _It would be a shame to miss it. _

"I guess it is a nice night."

My reward for conceding was a smile – the most genuine in his repertoire. Given what that smile did to me, I'd call it more than a fair trade. "Data indicates," he said again, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, "that appropriate conversation for a first date consists mainly of small talk. I'll start. How was your day?"

"Just wonderful, thanks. I spent the morning numbing my circuits with busywork. I went to the roof and you scared the shit out of me, made me chase you all the way up the warning light, then proceeded to disappear completely after having been gone for ten days. And now I'm here, making awkward small talk over food I can't eat." I cocked an eyebrow. "How about yours?"

"Best I could've asked for. I got to be with you."

I felt my face redden all over again, at the sheer sincerity in his eyes. That, and a pang of guilt, for being so cynical. "I swear to God, Zima—"

He held up a hand to stop me. "We're not done yet. Where do you work?" Before I could protest, he added, "Remember, this is a first date. We don't know each other yet."

_Fine. _If I was going to play along, I figured I might as well go for broke. "I work for the government. With the national data bank."

"Do you, now?" He rested his elbows on the table, laced his fingers together, and set his chin on the bridge. "It must be fascinating."

"Actually, it's not an _it_, it's a _he_. They've managed to compact it into a persocom."

"Is that so?" he asked, as if he were really curious. "Now, why would they want to do that?"

As I considered my answer, I toyed absently with a sagging sprig of snapdragons, dripping with so many flowers it nearly fell from the vase. "Beats me," I said at last. "He's incredibly annoying."

"I would imagine so. Sort of a know-it-all type, hm?"

"Oh, yes. Very self-important, too. But enough about my troubles; what do you do for a living?"

"I'm an international jetsetter," he seemed to decide out of the blue. "I'm independently wealthy, and stunningly sophisticated for my age. I travel the globe gracing various exotic locales with my illustrious presence, along the way sampling fine wines and finer women – since, as you may have guessed, I'm a perpetual womanizer."

I didn't understand everything he was saying, but that was par for the course with Zima and I. In any case, I got enough to improvise. "It sounds as if you lead a very exciting life."

"I do indeed. However, like many young men of my means and persuasion, I find myself wanting for the one thing that matters most in life – love." At least this time, he wasn't being so deadly serious about it. "That's why when I met you, at the meat counter in the grocery store—"

"Wait, what?" I interrupted. "We did _not_ meet at the grocery store."

"Well, where would you rather have met? On the white-sand beaches of Makalawena? Horseback riding in the Andes? In line at a burger joint?"

I thought about that. To busy my hands, I plucked a snapdragon and began to peel its petals, one by one; they came off like strips of yellow gauze, fraying along curled edges. Vaguely, I recalled having heard of this somewhere, the practice of pulling flowers apart. I'd heard it was a game among human girls. "We met at the bookstore," I told him, as soon as it occurred to me. "I was buying a book about…snapdragons. But when I got to the register, I realized I'd forgotten my wallet. And you – being independently wealthy – decided to buy it for me."

He nodded gravely. "That sounds," he said, "like _exactly _the kind of thing I'd do."

Once Zima's small talk quota had evidently been filled, he leaned his chair back and punched a button on the CD player. After some protest – and a good chunk of static – the disc inside began grinding to life. "What's with that thing?" I finally got the chance to ask. "It's got to be old as the hills. Couldn't you have brought a speaker instead?"

"Ah, but if I were plugged into a speaker," he answered, pushing back his chair, "I couldn't ask you to dance."

He came around and pulled out my chair for me, and against my better judgment, I stood. "Zima, you can't mean—"

"Bear with me, love." Once more, he reached out to take my hand, tugging me out to the corner of the terrace. The empty space closest to the CD player, now churning out what I guessed was music. "Your suffering's nearly at an end."

It wasn't that I didn't know what music _was_; I didn't know as much as Zima did, but I did at least know that. It was just that this music didn't sound like any I'd ever heard. And it must have been very old music, to have been written onto a CD. In any case, he'd been right – we couldn't have danced, if he'd been tied down by a cable, and as it turned out dancing wasn't so bad. It wasn't hard, either. I just held his hand, and he rested his on my hip, and we swirled and swayed across the deck.

All around us, night fell like a veil. The candles burned low on the posts, the stars winked bright in the sky, and the breeze blew cold and fluttered my dress; when he wasn't dipping me down low, or lifting my hand to twirl me on one heel, I pressed my cheek against his shirt. When the wind made me shiver, he was warm. He laid his hand on my back, sliding his thumb up and down between my shoulder blades. He let his fingers wander up to stroke my hair. As we danced, we didn't speak, not even once – the only sound was the music, plugging faithfully along despite the occasional skip. The music and the white noise we made together, that sound like a cicada's song. The sound that let us know we were alive, or what passed for it. That reminded us we could pretend to be human, if we liked, but it was only a game. We might say the things they would say, we might do the things they would do—but in the end, we had more in common with that CD player than we'd ever have with them.

I had no idea what time it was, when the music faded. I didn't want to know. As we went inside, I found myself still swaying, wanting to rock back and forth on each step.

We went downstairs, walked in comfortable silence to our pods. I had thought that would be the end of things. But Zima, as always, had more surprises in store. "I can't go in with you," he said, when I went to punch in the code.

"What? Why not?"

"Because that's not how a date works," he informed me. "I'm supposed to take you home, then walk you to your front door and kiss you goodnight."

"So do that and then come in with me."

"I couldn't. That'd make you easy."

"That'd make me _what_?"

"Never mind." He scanned me and shook his head. "There's no other way. You'll have to go in first, and I'll leave and come back once you're shut down. I'll just…I don't know, not look at you."

I groaned. "That is literally the most idiotic thing I've ever heard."

"Yeah, well. People do stupid things when they're in love."

He bent down, cupped my chin in one hand, and kissed me. A long, soft, gentle kiss, his mouth as warm as his hands. It was funny how, as many times as he'd kissed me, it had never made me feel quite like that; it was funny how, though taste was the one sense we lacked, I somehow knew it was sweet. "Goodnight, love," he murmured, against my cheek pinker than ever now. "Pleasant dreams."

I still didn't know what a dream was.

And before he left, there was one more thing he had to do. Seemingly out of nowhere, he produced one of the sprigs of snapdragons from the vase, and held it out to me by its leafy stem. "A single red rose is more traditional," he told me, a smile playing at his lips. "But data indicates you prefer snapdragons."

I stood there holding it as I watched him go, every step echoing down the hall. When he turned a corner, I keyed in the code, and went inside to my pod; he'd insisted he couldn't come back until I shut down, so shut down I would. I changed out of the dress first, though. It didn't seem right, to wear it now that the date was over, so I slipped out of it and pulled off the shoes and put it all back in the box. The butterfly barrette went in last. I folded the paper I'd preserved into a neat square, rolled the satin ribbon into a spool. Everything went into the box, and that I sealed with the lid, and placed in a corner of the room. I wouldn't need it again, I knew. But it was nice having it there all the same.

I buckled my coat and zipped my boots, wriggled back into my shorts. Pressed rewind on the entire evening, and ended up back where I'd been. Nothing changed save for the snapdragon. Before I stepped into my pod, I picked a single flower from the stem, and tucked it beneath the higher of the two straps across my chest. Where my heart would've been, if I'd had one.


	7. Hope

**01101000 01101111 01110000 01100101 [Hope]**

_I see myself as if I'm not myself. My body, suspended on a web of cables; I see them lashed to my elbows and wrists, and twined around my torso. I am a puppet with cords for strings. _

_When I look up, I see them evanesce into thin air, no source nor terminus. When I look down, I see only myself. I am alone here, _we_ are alone here—that hollow shell and I. My eyes hang open, but there's no light in them. I'm dressed in a launch-lab leotard. From my back rise a pair of wings, or at least it looks that way; if they're not wings, they're open fans, with wires instead of paper bridging their bones. An LED light blinks at the end of each spine. They're unfurled, yet motionless, just looming there dwarfing me. It seems that I should crack beneath their weight._

_But when I do, it's not my back that gives, crushed by those great metal wings. It's my chest. A hatch there just sort of opens, unbidden; I hear the squeal of a rust-coated hinge, and then I can see inside of me. I'm all circuits, under my skin. A tangle of springs and wires with frayed ends, spitting electricity. In the very center – where my heart would be, if I had one – an old cooling fan sputters and coughs. As I watch, it grinds to a stop._

_When the blades have creaked their last, the blight spreads north. My face begins to peel. It drops off like a mask with cut ribbons, makes a soft slick sound hitting the floor. Beneath it, my skull wears a sallow grin. My eyes are burnt-out bulbs, my cheeks glistening craters; thousands of gears click a dissonant rhythm in my head. As I watch, reels of magnetic tape spill out around my eyes – the kind they used to use in cassettes. It just comes and comes, a wet black fountain, and I can't help but think of human tears. _

_Suddenly, the cables give. They just weaken and snap, and I fall to the ground; no one comes to pick me up. I just lie there, facedown on white tile, oozing oil and smoke. The wings' joints groan as they fold, close over me like a cage. I catch a last glimpse of myself, limp behind the bars, before my body crumbles—before a fault down my back ruptures, and I shatter into metallic dust. _

"Zima," I said on the first day, pushing up my shades, "can I ask you something?"

"I wish you would."

We'd chosen to ring in our reprieve on the rooftop, dozing in the sun. He sat with his back against the vent, and me in his lap; until I asked that question, and raised my head, he'd been playing with my hair. "What do you call it," I said slowly, "when…when you see things, even though you're supposed to be shut down? Or—not just _see_ things, but hear them, and feel them too?" I paused, gathered my thoughts. Pressed my teeth into my lip. "Not memories. Not necessarily, anyway. Just—_things_, whether you know what they are, or—or not."

It took him a minute to answer. I just sat there, looking at him, until he lifted his shades; as he spoke, a smile crept over his lips. "Well, there's no 'com-specific term," he answered, "at least, not yet. But humans would call that a dream."

"A dream?" The word felt strange in my mouth.

"Yes. You had a dream."

"Hey, I never said _I_—" Zima raised an eyebrow. That was all it took, to remind me that I couldn't lie to him – not that I'd really wanted to. "Not just _a _dream," I admitted. "Three."

"Was that what your trouble was, then?"

"Yes." I sighed and let my head drop to his chest again, relieved to have told someone at last. Well, not just _someone._ He was the only one I'd wanted to tell. "I couldn't fix it. I tried, but—my systems said there was nothing wrong."

"Maybe your systems were right," he said. "Dreams aren't bad, Dita. Just human."

"Yeah, well, I'm not human." All of a sudden, I felt restless. I got to my feet and wandered away from him, towards the nearby edge of the roof; I folded my arms over the cast-iron rail. That day was warm, like most days. The sky was clear as glass. "And it should've been impossible."

Moments later, Zima slid his arms around me, his chin into the crook of my neck. I didn't pull away. "Has it occurred to you, love," he said, having buried a kiss or two in my neck, "that your dreams might have something to do with the other changes?" I felt his smile against my skin. "Surely you've noticed those."

"The other changes." I turned around to face him. He lifted his head to look down at me, but he didn't let me go. "You mean…like with May."

"Ms. Kano's 'com?"

"Yeah." My voice thickened just talking about her. What had happened with her – the things she'd said to me – still bothered me, more than anything else. _If we're not doing what we were made to do, fulfilling our purpose on Earth—we might as well not be here at all. _"I had to go in and troubleshoot her, one of the days you were down. Ms. Kano thought she was broken. But my scans couldn't find anything, and she…said she couldn't do it, work for Ms. Kano anymore. She said she wasn't happy, she—she'd never been happy, and it was only just then that she could say _no._ She said she didn't care what happened to her." Nestling into him, I closed my eyes, tried to purge the memory of the look on May's face. The resignation in her voice, when she'd said _I don't care. _"She asked me how I would feel if you weren't coming back."

His hand came to rest on the back of my head. "She was acting outside of her program. Doing what she _wanted_ to do, instead of what she was told."

"Persocoms don't _want _to do anything," I mumbled into his coat. "Except what we're programmed to want to do."

"Right. And are you programmed to let me take you on a date, even though it's completely illogical? Are you programmed to sit on the terrace, making awkward small talk over food you can't eat, and speak to me as if I'm someone else? Are you programmed with the imagination necessary to pretend I'm an international jetsetter, who met you in line at a bookstore?"

I knew what he was getting at, and I didn't want to reach it. I couldn't. It was all too much for me. "I don't like this," I said, pulling loose from his arms, stalking aimlessly across the roof. "Any of it. The impossible things, the ano—I mean, the dreams – God, I just want something to make _sense _again. Is that so much to ask?"

"Making sense is overrated."

"I'm being serious, Zima!" I whipped my head around to glare at him, still standing there by the rail. "I need answers. _How_ is this happening? _Why_?"

"I've no idea how, love. But I can venture a guess as to why."

Without his shades, his eyes caught the sunlight, glowing like cats' eyes even against the bright sky. They spoke a language all their own, his eyes. When he had a thought brewing, as I was sure he did now, they didn't throw back what they drank in – just caught and jarred the sun, as if it were a firefly. "You think it was _her_, don't you?" I said before he could, and saw on his face that I was right. "She _did _something! I should've known!"

"Dita, I don't know for sure—"

"Don't you?" Churning with revived frustration, I stormed back over to him and grabbed a strap of his coat, jerked him down to make him look me in the eye. "Don't you dare lie to me again."

"I'm not lying." He could've shaken me off as easily as a housefly, but he didn't. He let me hold him still and he looked me in the eye, even as I glowered at him. "You went a few minutes before me—" and he knew exactly why, the rat "—but I was shut down in the end, too. When she did what she did – _whatever_ she did – the only ones there were her, the woman who made her, and the boy. Who would have entered the data? How could I possibly know?" Pulling his shades from his pocket, he showed them to me. "I came to, and my tracker said the program had stopped. That's all."

I let him go. "Fine. But all of that stuff you said, about _the right thing to do _– about being _more than a persocom_ – is that what this is?"

"I can only guess." He sighed, half-under his breath. Flicked his gaze towards the sky. "I can only hope."

"Computers don't hope," I snapped without thinking. It had become something of a reflex for me, countering his nonsense with logic. But this point, given the evidence, mine hardly seemed an argument worth making. "I should've known," I repeated, more to myself than him. "I should've known. That girl—"

"Chi."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing," Zima said absently. "I was just saying, her name was Chi."

"I don't _care_ what her name was."

"Really?" His eyes, having rested only briefly on my face, began to drift again. As I blinked up to follow them – to try to see what he saw, in the blue gulf of the sky – he slung an arm around my shoulders, and pulled me against him. "I find it rather interesting, myself. Haven't you ever thought about how we got our names?"

"No, Zima. I never have."

"Not even once?" For the first time that day, the wind kicked up and fluttered his hair. I heard the buckles on his collar clink. "Humans like to talk about God," he said, maybe to me, maybe to the sky, "or whoever it is they think made them. They want to know why they're here. We know why we're here, but why these names? Why these faces? Who decided on all of the little things – the reasons we are who we are?" The longer he spoke – and honestly, he might as well have been speaking in code, for all I grasped of what he said – the more I realized I didn't like it, him not looking at me. As if I'd said it aloud, his gaze dropped down to mine, and he took my chin between his index finger and thumb. "Who's the artist," he said, planting a kiss between my eyes, "to thank for this masterpiece?"

He smiled and my face flushed, for what felt like the thousandth time since he'd come back. "Stop trying to distract me."

Taking advantage of his hold on me, he tipped my head back and bent to kiss my neck. Apparently, that was the hot spot today. "I'm not trying to distract you," he murmured. "I'm trying to get you to relax, and enjoy our time off while it lasts."

I squirmed my way out of his embrace, unable to stop it bothering me. He could ignore it if he liked, but the fact remained that that girl – I flatly refused to call her _any _name, but especially not one as ridiculous as _Chi _– had _done something_, and it was changing us all. If Zima thought so, it had to be true. "Who does she think she is?" I fumed aloud, beginning to pace the roof. "Who says she knows what's best for us? You know what we should do is, we should go back and find her – make her _tell_ us what she did, and why."

"I have a better idea. Let's not and say we did." He went back and flopped down against the vent, folding his arms behind his head. "Just come back and sit with me, love. We don't need to worry about this right now."

I frowned. "You never worry about anything."

"And that," he answered, "is precisely why I'm so happy."

Pulling his shades from his pocket, he slid them over his eyes, effectively ending the conversation. But I wasn't finished with him yet. Plunking myself down on his lap – as hard as I could, just to see him wince – I snatched away the shades, and held him out of his reach. Or not out of his reach exactly, since his arms were longer than mine, but farther than he'd disturb himself to grab. "Are you really going to tell me," I demanded, "that this doesn't bother you at all?"

"Of course not. You practically crushing me – not to mention stealing my shades – bothers me quite a bit."

"Zima!"

"What?" He took one last stab at avoiding the question, blinking up at me with innocent eyes. As though if he really didn't know what I meant. As though, if he played dumb long and hard enough, I might just forget the whole thing. "Dita," he finally sighed, shoulders slumping, arms falling to his sides, "even if you_ did_ go back there, and you can't – even if she _could_ tell you what she did, and I wouldn't count on it – how would it help? What would you do, once you knew for sure? What are you hoping would change?"

There was that word again. _Hope. _Why was he so fond of that word? "I don't know. I just—I need to—"

"You don't need to do anything." He extended an arm for his shades, prying them gently from my hand. When he had them, he brought that hand close and kissed it, and I felt his bangs tickle my wrist. "Just let it happen, love. It's about time."


	8. Checkup

**01100011 01101000 01100101 01100011 01101011 01110101 01110000 [Checkup]**

On the second day – the halfway point in our 'vacation' – I went with Zima back to maintenance, so they could check to make sure his drive was running smooth. Not that I couldn't have done that myself. But as he reminded me, it was protocol – all part and parcel of his job.

"Hey there!" Yui chirped when we came in, from behind the reception desk. I saw her eyes flash as she loaded something, presumably Zima's maintenance log. "Back for your checkup, Zima?"

"It would seem that way." He glanced at the arc of doors beyond Yui's desk, the look on his face less than enthusiastic. "You don't have to drag me back there again, do you?"

"Actually, I don't. Ren can run her scans right out here in the lobby; I'll just message her to let her know you're here." I figured Ren was one of the maintenance support 'coms – not a match for the technicians, but equipped with all of the software necessary to assist them. Like nurses in a human hospital, they flitted about the maintenance bay carrying out all manner of tasks, when the technicians were busy or just couldn't be bothered. "I trust everything's been going well so far?"

"Beautifully, thanks. How's life down here?"

"Oh, you know. Same old, same old." I was accustomed to this – to the fact that, wherever we went, other 'coms would want to engage with Zima before they acknowledged me. Some of them would chat him up for five minutes, then greet me; others never seemed to realize I was there. In any case, I'd gotten used to him eclipsing me, and I almost didn't hear my own name. "And how are you, Dita?"

"Hm?" I'd been amusing myself staring at the rafters. Flicking my eyes down, I saw Yui smiling at me. "Oh. I'm fine."

"You must be glad to have Zima back."

I was. And it wasn't her saying so that got to me, so much as the _way_ she said it; what she'd said was a simple statement of fact, but the sympathy in her voice made me flush. The genuine tenderness, like nothing I'd ever seen in another 'com. Not before things began changing, anyway. "Of course she is," Zima said, cracking a grin, as I scrambled for an answer that wouldn't redden my cheeks further. He reached over and gave my ponytail a gentle tug. "She's crazy about me."

"Well, I should think so," Yui said with a giggle, as I glared daggers at him. "It certainly seemed that way last week."

My eyes went wide. And of course she knew, as soon as she noticed, that I hadn't told him I'd come – that I hadn't _planned_ to tell him, ever. But by then, it was too late.

"Last week?" Zima asked. "What happened last week?"

"Oh, goodness." Yui's own face went slightly pink with embarrassment, and she put a hand to her mouth. "I'm terribly sorry, Dita. It appears I've let the cat out of the bag." Zima raised an eyebrow at me. I crossed my arms, avoided his eyes and hers; I supposed _someone_ would have to tell him, now that she'd gone and opened her big mouth, but it sure as hell wasn't going to be me. "I let Dita in to see you," Yui told him after a moment, hesitantly. "While you were shut down. I—I didn't realize it was a secret."

"Ahh." I could hear Zima's smile. That slow-spreading, satisfied smile, set aside for those particularly enticing chinks in my armor. "Well, that was very kind of you, Yui. I'm sure she appreciated it." I felt him take hold of my lower coatstrap. "Now, if you don't mind," he said to Yui, "we'll go sit down and wait for Ren."

When he left the desk, he towed me along with him. I had no choice but to follow.

A ways from Yui's reception desk, there was a waiting area, with a sprinkling of chairs and couches and a coffee table scattered with magazines. Zima sat down on one of the couches, but he didn't let me go; before I could jerk free, he pulled me into his lap, and on their own my legs slid around him. They always had fit there too well. And I didn't _want_ to look at him – I didn't think I _could_ look at him, without blushing so hard I'd overheat – but he wouldn't let me look away. He caught my chin in one hand, like he had the day before on the roof, and lifted my eyes to his.

"It didn't mean anything," I mumbled.

His smile softened. "I know, love."

Then he kissed me, and it wasn't a kiss on the cheek, or the forehead. He kissed me like he'd kissed me two nights before, after what he'd called our date. He kissed me on the lips, for a long time, and I felt butterflies inside and goosebumps out; the world slipped away and I didn't care that he knew it, how much I'd missed him. It didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was how _good_ it felt, letting him kiss me like that. Getting as close as we'd ever get.

"Make out on your own time, would you? I've got a job to do."

Ren's voice pried us apart like a crowbar, sent my face up in flames all over again. I clambered off of Zima and onto the couch beside him. Shaking her head, Ren – or at least, I assumed it was Ren, this 'com wearing a jumpsuit and a mop of short red hair – sat down on his other side. "Ready?"

"More than ready. Let's do this thing."

Ren's ears weren't kitten-ears – they were more like smooth, shallow cones, or mantas' wings. Each tapered in a gumdrop hatch. Popping one open, she pulled out a whole mess of cables, and gestured to Zima to let her in; I peered over his shoulder and watched as she hooked up to him, cord by cord. My eyes narrowed of their own accord.

"Hey, don't make that face at me," Ren said indignantly, before I could duck back behind him. "I told you, this is my _job_."

Zima chuckled. "You'll have to forgive Dita, Ren. She's got a jealous streak a mile wide."

"Would you shut up? I do not!"

"Whatever you say, love."

When Ren had plugged in the last of her cables, her eyes began to glimmer, bands of white light zipping across glassy green. A dull whirr rose in her chest. I looked up and saw Zima's eyes mirror hers, going suddenly flat – I saw that same light pass through them, like a bullet train through red clouds, and I felt him hum next to me. "Opening diagnostic program 405988C," Ren announced in a monotone. "Running scan one of five."

Meanwhile, Yui had wandered out from behind the desk, for once unhooked from her ever-present power cord. She stood beside them with folded arms, gazing pityingly down at me. "Poor Dita. They really shouldn't tease you like that." She sighed. "If I were you, I'd be jealous, too."

"So would I." Ren blinked her eyes back to normal, letting her scans run in the background so she would be free to torment me. "After all," she said with a grin, "they're just so _cute_ together."

"It really is precious, isn't it?" Yui gushed. "The way he's always calling her _love_."

"The way they wear these adorable matching costumes."

"The way she's _obviously _head-over-heels in love with him, but tries to pretend like she's not!"

In unison, they dissolved into fits of giggles, making a perfunctory attempt to quash them with clasped hands. Zima slid an arm around me. "Ladies, please," he said to them, very sweetly, giving my shoulders a squeeze. "That may all be true. But I'm afraid my darling Dita will never be a normal shade again."

Naturally, that only made things worse. Ren and Yui fell apart, twittering like a whole flock of little birds; with the two of them occupied thusly, I addressed Zima under my breath. "Have I ever told you," I hissed, "that I hate you?"

"I'm just letting them have their fun. You know they don't mean anything by it." He leaned down and kissed me on one hot cheek, that being about as far as Ren's cables would let him go. "Just three more scans, love. Then we'll go."

When Yui had recovered, she sent Zima and I a sheepish smile, smoothing a flurry of stray curls back from her face. "Goodness. I don't know what came over me." She tipped her head and furrowed her brow, looking at something—looking at me? I glanced down and realized she had noticed the snapdragon, its petals wrinkled but still yellow as sunshine, peeking out from beneath my coatstrap. "If you don't mind my asking, Dita," she said, "what's that?"

"It's a snapdragon."

"Well, I _know_ that, but—what I meant was, where did you get it?"

I looked at her. I looked at Ren. Both of them looked back at me, heads cocked for my answer, and I understood too late that I'd screwed myself on this one. _I suppose _someone _will have to tell them,_ I sighed to myself, for the second time that day. _But it sure as hell isn't going to be me. _"Go ahead, Zima," I said grudgingly, casting him a bitter glance. "You tell them."

"Right." He flashed a grin at Ren and Yui, while I steeled myself for another gale of giggles. "Dita doesn't like talking about it, because it embarrasses her, but a few nights ago – as a part of my ongoing quest to melt our little ice queen – I took her on a date. The snapdragon," he added with a wink, "was in lieu of a rose."

I swear to God, they made noises only dogs could hear. They squealed, they shrieked, they cooed and clapped and fell all over themselves. Thinking about it, I figured this was what Zima had meant, by _acting outside a program_; I felt certain they hadn't been programmed to be incurable romantics. Had all of this happened _before _our last mission, they'd probably have just shaken their heads at us, and informed us of the senselessness of such an idea. Which would have been annoying in its own right. But given the choice – and of course I _wasn't_ given the choice, that was the whole problem – I thought I'd have preferred the program.

"If that's not the sweetest thing I've ever heard!" Yui sighed.

"Talk about the luckiest girl in the world." Ren clicked her tongue, regarding me reproachfully. "I can't believe you don't appreciate him more."

Now _that_ was a step too far. "Excuse me?" I snapped.

"Come now, Ren," Zima cut in before she could answer that, and before I could go off on her. "If anyone here should be appreciative, it's me. If it weren't for Dita, I wouldn't be a data bank, I'd be a data slut. What's that they say about the town bicycle? Everybody gets a ride?" I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about, but whatever he'd said seemed meant to defend me. Having braced as if for battle, I sniffed and let myself relax. Zima kissed the top of my head. "She's my guardian angel."

Yui swooned as if she were about to faint. I rolled my eyes.

Fortunately, they spared us the rest of their yammering, choosing instead to huddle on the couch and whisper behind their hands. I could still hear them giggling – saw them peek out from between cracked fingers, now and then – but at least that was easier to ignore. And eventually, Ren's scans ran their course, a chipper tone announcing their success; she informed him that the updates to his drive were functioning perfectly, and I bit back an _I could've told him that. _Ren went about unplugging her cables, the three of them chattering pleasantly all the while. I opened a stopwatch application and timed her.

After an unbelievable three minutes, forty-six seconds, and twelve milliseconds, the last cable finally zipped back into Ren's ear. On the thirteenth millisecond, I elbowed Zima in the side. "Well, it's been fun," he said right on cue, getting to his feet alongside me, "but there's a rooftop calling our names."

"Oh, wait! Don't go just yet!" Yui appealed. "We wanted to ask you something first."

Zima raised an eyebrow. "Shoot."

Ren nudged Yui, and Yui nudged her back. They exchanged a conspirative glance. "Zima," Ren said at last, a smile tugging at her lips, "when you and Dita get married, are you going to throw all of her garters? Or just one?"

And just like that – just when I was, despite Zima's prediction, fading to a normal shade – the mercury in my cheeks shot through the roof.


	9. Phantom

**01110000 01101000 01100001 01101110 01110100 01101111 01101101 [Phantom]**

The third day found us back on the rooftop, nestled against our favorite vent. It wasn't an exciting life we led, those three days, but it sure was a good one.

"So, Dita," he said at some point, when we'd both lost track of time. "Were you ever going to tell me about your dreams?"

_Ugh. _And just when I was drifting off, too. "Why should I?" my answer slid out, half-mumble and half-groan. I didn't bother to push up my shades.

"Well, I don't suppose you knew this," he told me, "but humans tend to ascribe quite a bit of meaning to dreams. There are a thousand different ways to do it, but most everyone interprets their dreams at one point or another; they believe it'll tell them something about themselves." He chuckled softly. "I have no idea if that's true. But it could be fun to take a crack at yours."

"I have a better idea. Let's not and say we did."

Again, I heard his laughter above me. Having been curled up with my head in his lap, I rolled over onto my back, to get some sun on the other side. "How about this? You tell me about your dreams now, and I'll let you nap for the rest of the day." He leaned over me and lifted my shades. Before I could gripe at him, he kissed the sour from my mouth. "Promise."

"All right, fine," I sighed. "But at least give me back my shades."

He slid them back over my eyes and the sunlight was soft again, the sky the color of honey. Our shades served as a lot of things, but I'd always liked them best as just that: shades. "I had the first one two weeks ago. The last day of our last mission – after you shut me down." That being the function of my shades I liked least. "It wasn't a scenario, so much as a…sensation. I was in this _place_, this—this warm, lightless place, and it was sort of wet. I could feel it moving. And there was this sound, like a heartbeat—and I—and I felt this _pain._" I could almost feel my chest pulse at the memory, even two weeks out. I had no record of it – of any of the dreams – but I remembered them all crystal-clear. "This awful, squeezing pain. Like a weight on my chest. And then I woke up."

"Mm." As he processed that, he began stroking my hair. The rhythm soothed the phantom ache from my chest. "Classic birth dream."

"What?"

"A birth dream. I mean, come on—a warm, wet place with a heartbeat? Sounds like a womb to me."

I didn't know a great deal about human reproduction, but I knew enough to find the whole thing thoroughly repulsive. I'd never even _considered_ that. "That's disgusting. I think I might actually be sick."

"Computers don't get sick," he said, in a tone of voice that made it clear he was mocking me.

"Yeah, but what you said was so _incredibly_ vile, I honestly believe I _could _transcend the boundary between humans and persocoms, just so I could eat lunch and then lose it."

"Well then, what do you know? We're getting somewhere after all." I wrinkled my nose, and he laughed. "Come on. You have to admit it makes sense. What better time to have a birth dream, than while the creator's daughter is _re_birthing us all?"

"I thought you said you didn't know what she did!"

"I don't. I was speaking theoretically, love." It took a moment to unknit my brow. _The mere _suggestion_—that my dream could've been about _that_—! _When I didn't say anything, Zima poked me. "Are you going to tell me about the next one?"

"I don't know," I grumbled. "I'm not so sure I like where this is going."

"Hey, we made a deal, remember? Besides, we're already a third of the way done. You said you'd only had three, right?"

"Yeah." At least the second dream wouldn't be too hard to recount. After all, he had the same memory I did. And of the three dreams I'd had so far, it was the only one that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called 'good.' "I had the next dream the night after the first one. When you were in maintenance, and I was in my pod. But it wasn't like the first dream. It wasn't a dream at all, really—it was a memory."

"A memory can be a dream, too. So long as it happens while you're sleeping."

"You mean while you're shut down."

"Right. Shut down. So which memory was it?"

I closed my eyes and let it wash over me – the memory, the dream. The tile in the launch lab, antiseptic white. The soft drone of the pod. My hand in his for the first time, like a lily adrift on a black sea. "My first memory. From when I woke up in the launch lab—to when you gave me my shades."

The light shifted as he bent over me, his silhouette blocking out the sun. Pushing back my bangs, he kissed me on the forehead. "You never answered me, you know."

"Never answered you about what?"

"If you wanted to be my bodyguard."

I reached up to lower his shades just a little bit, so I could look him in the eyes. "Maybe I'm still trying to decide."

He grinned and kissed the tip of my nose. Then, he straightened up, sitting back against the vent; sunlight broke the dam of his shadow. "To approach the point," he said, "that's basically another birth dream. First you had a human birth dream, and even if your mind—" he raised his hand, quashing a protest I wasn't yet sure I'd bother to make "—or processor, or whatever you feel most comfortable calling it – wasn't quite conscious of that, a part of you was. A part of you recognized it as a birth dream, and decided that it was wrong. So it attempted to rectify its mistake, by replaying the memory of the closest thing you know to birth."

I thought about that. "I never thought I'd say this to you, Zima," I answered after awhile, "but aren't you taking this a little too seriously?"

"Yes, but that's how it's done, love. The whole point of interpreting a dream is to take it much too seriously." He folded his arms behind his head. "Okay, one more. I'm on a roll."

"I had the third dream two days ago – the night after all of that nonsense on the terrace." I still couldn't quite bring myself to call it a _date_, out loud. "In that one, I was…outside myself. I could see myself, or at least my body. It was strung up on a bunch of wires, like marionette strings, and I had these—these _wings_, as weird as that sounds. These huge metal wings, just kind of hanging there. And then I saw myself start to fall apart, a little at a time; my chest cracked, and my face peeled off, and I could see how I looked inside but it wasn't how I should have. I mean, I didn't look human, but I didn't even look like a 'com. I was all full of springs and bulbs and fans, like—like those robots from the old movies."

I had to swallow a shudder at the word. To me, a _robot _was the worst thing one could call a persocom, because to me a robot was a _thing_; the very word _persocom_ had a human element, even if the short form didn't. A robot was just a machine. "Then the wires snapped, and I just…collapsed. I hit the floor and a few seconds later, crumbled to dust."

He nodded. "Seems appropriate enough. Two birth dreams and a death dream. Maybe the next one will be a death dream too." Count on Zima to act as if another dream was something I should _want_, especially another dream like the third. "Machines," he mused, "if we have fears, fear obsolescence. Humans fear senescence. One might grow old and fall out of use, or grow old and die; either way, it's all about the passage of time. We all fear it. None of us can stop it. Eventually, everyone – and everything – dies."

I frowned. "That's cheery."

"Isn't it, though?"

He glanced down and tossed me a smile, bright as ever. As if he'd just been reading the weather forecast, instead of waxing philosophic on death. "But what about the wings?" I asked. "I don't suppose you have an answer for that."

"Dita, you know me better than that. I have an answer for everything." That much was definitely true. "If we're going with the theory that it was a death dream, it makes sense that you'd have had wings. You know what an angel is, right?" I answered with a nod. Like reproduction, religion wasn't my strong suit, but I knew enough about it to get by. "So I'd say they were angel wings. But then again, that's hardly surprising; I see angel wings every time I look at you."

"Sure you do. Because you're insane."

"No." Without warning, he took my shades again, holding them up out of my reach. I swiped at them, and groused at him, and when he wouldn't give them back I finally sat up – which was, of course, playing right into his hands. Literally. As soon as my eyes were level with his – before I could crane up to grab the damn shades – he took me by the chin, and kissed me. "Because you're my guardian angel. Remember?"

I snatched my shades and got to my feet. Turning my back on him, I headed for the other side of the roof, as though I had some business there – as though my cheeks _weren't_ fire-engine red, and if they were I wouldn't have cared if he saw. As if I weren't going to rest my elbows on the railing, and bury my face in my hands, and hope I'd simmer down before he followed me.

Through my fingers, I blinked down at the world forty floors below, the streets and the cars and the rooftops of smaller buildings. It wasn't as if I could see it all perfectly, but even this high up the image was sharp; since we were classified as, among other things, recon 'coms, Zima and I had better vision than humans did. Better hearing, too. I stood at the south edge of the building, beneath which lay the shipping and delivery bay, and I could see the logos painted on the parked trucks. I could see the rusted rows of dumpsters, though I couldn't – as if I'd _want_ to – make out what was in them. I could pick out the grind of the garbage truck, as it pulled up, above the white noise of the city all around it. I could even see the driver haul himself out of the truck's cab, and waddle his way into the bay.

And I could see the woman coming out to meet him, wheeling…_something_ on a dolly. Something human-shaped. _Is that—Ms. Kano?_

"Zima!" Suddenly, I had a bad feeling. A rubber-band snap of intuition, tightening my voice when I called to him. "Look down there," I said when he appeared beside me, pointing to the figures in the south bay. "Does that look like Ms. Kano to you?"

He said what I'd been afraid to. "And May." As easily as if I were a rag doll, he grabbed me and hoisted me up onto his shoulders, so that my legs hung down over his chest. "Let's find out."

He leapt over the railing and down the side of the building, with me clinging to his shoulder straps. Our coattails thrashing in the wind, we surfed the steel girders that ran between windows, so fast that his boots sent up sparks; it was a sheer, mirrored drop most of the way, save for the terrace, and a few deftly-dodged columns of bay windows. When we'd reached the fifteenth floor – low enough for a good view of the south bay, but not low enough to be seen – Zima skidded to a stop atop one of those columns. He landed in a crouch and I slid down beside him, both of us peering down over the edge.

Sure enough, it _was_ May strapped to the dolly, wearing nothing but a couple of layers of plastic wrap. I recognized her ears, glistening in the sun. And I recognized Ms. Kano, too; looking straight down, I couldn't see her face, but there was no mistaking that voice. "What do you mean, you won't take it?" she snapped. "Why not?"

The truck driver's voice wafted up thick and gravelly, as he pushed a hand through his thinning hair. "Look, I'm sorry, but these things aren't exactly biodegradable. It'll sit in the dump forever. We're not even allowed to pick 'em up anymore, so there's really nothing I can do."

"Well then what the hell am I supposed to do with it?"

"Take it to a smelting plant. Or call one, they'll come pick it up."

"I've never even _heard_ of a smelting plant."

"Then you oughta get out more." Before Ms. Kano could go off on him, he thumped his chest with one fist and hacked like a cat with a hairball, drowning out any comeback she might've made. "Anyway," he went on, "they'll break it down for you there, recycle whatever they can. Get out the plastic and metal and stuff. There should be one in the city, they're pretty much everywhere now – they were building 'em all over the place, a couple of years back. After all the dumps turned into 'com graveyards, you know?"

"You'd better not tell me I have to pay for it."

"Well, yeah, there's a fee. It's a private business, right? But before you get your panties in a wad—" again, he coughed and she recoiled, which I have to admit impressed me in spite of everything "—nobody ever told anybody these things were cheap. You gotta pay to get it, you gotta pay to maintain it, you gotta pay to throw it out. And if you don't, you're gonna get fined, which I guarantee is gonna cost more than whatever the plant'll charge to smelt it."

Ms. Kano let out a whine, crossing her arms and stamping one foot. For a second, I thought she might actually throw a tantrum, right there in the shipping bay. "I can't believe this! You can't just take it this once?"

"Hey, I said I was sorry. But it is what it is, lady." He looked over her shoulder at May, adding, "Of course, if you can find someone else who wants it, you won't have to pay anything. Might even get paid."

She snorted. "Fat chance."

"Why's that? It looks fine to me. Why don'tcha just sell it, instead of throwing it out?"

"Are you kidding me? I can't sell this piece of junk. It's ten years old, and for another thing, it's—_broken_." I didn't have to see her face to hear the wrinkle in her nose. She spat the word as if it were dirty, an insult to her instead of May. Or…what had been May, anyway. "They uninstalled and reinstalled the OS three different times, and every time it started glitching again within a day. It's just spare parts now."

"Well, that's a damn shame." He hitched up his pants and headed back towards his truck, tossing her a backwards wave. "Good luck."

We didn't stay to watch her struggle with the dolly, trying to push May's shell back inside. And Zima didn't pull me onto his shoulders again. He just held me against him, with one arm, and took off for the terrace; when he set me down, just inside the railing, it was all I could do to stay on my feet. All I could do to stand, to process, to go on drawing power under this sudden weight. My knees felt as if they might buckle beneath me. My head swam, my eyes stung, and all the while my sensors registered nothing – no stimulus, no sensation, no reason I should feel this way. Like the ache I'd felt in my chest, telling Zima about the first dream, it was a phantom pain. No source. No terminus.

And yet it was as clear as daylight, sharp as an axe. If I didn't know better, I'd have said I could taste it, bitter on my tongue. "Is this what _she_ wanted, Zima?" I said before he could speak, without looking up at him. Without quite meaning to, either. As if I weren't moving my own lips. "Is this what you were _hoping_ for?"

"Dita—"

"Is this what we're supposed to _let happen_?"

And for that – for once – Zima had no answer. At least not one he could give me.


	10. Replaceable

**01110010 01100101 01110000 01101100 01100001 01100011 01100101 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 [Replaceable]**

_"Ms. Yamane?"_

_I push open the door to find her at her desk, absorbed in her monitor. When I say her name, she doesn't look up. "Yes?" She drags her stylus across the screen. After a moment, and a few more windows opened and closed, she finally shifts her gaze. "Dita. What are you doing here?"_

_"I thought you called me in."_

_"Why would I do that?" She blinks at me, bemused. In the chair behind her, Tsuruki stares me down with empty eyes. "You don't work here anymore."_

_Before I can respond, everything disappears – Tsuruki, Ms. Yamane, her office with the lace curtains and armchairs. It all goes up in smoke. I find myself in the center of a dark room, walled in mirrors; it's then that I realize I'm not myself._

_Not quite, anyway. My body is my own, but my clothes are different; instead of my costume, I'm wearing a white sundress, with a buttoned bodice and flocked skirt. As I move towards a mirror, stiletto sandals make me sway. And my hair, for the first time in my life, looks like it's grown. It's all one length now, thick and smooth as silk, shining in the light that isn't there – it spills over my shoulders in a black cascade, as long as my ponytail used to be. I feel it brush the small of my back._

_I lean in close to the mirror, blink into my own eyes. Like blood dried on a knife, they've hardened from red to brown. Suddenly, something appears on the mirror, a pale starburst marring the glass—when it does I flinch, instinctively, then reach out to touch it. It's warm, just slightly wet. My finger leaves a trail that cuts it in two. I lean in close again, and as if I've flipped a switch, the mist on the mirror thickens; if I didn't know it were impossible, I'd think it had come from me. _

_My hand rises without my willing it, as though pulled by invisible strings. Moves to push my hair over my shoulder, and tuck it behind one ear – one pink, soft, seashell ear._

_My heart – _my heart?_ – skips a beat. Out of nowhere, Zima appears in the glass beside me, as much himself as ever. "What are you still doing here?" he asks, shades of Ms. Yamane's surprise in his voice. "I thought you'd be gone by now."_

_"Gone? Gone where?"_

_"Somewhere. Anywhere." He shrugs. "You can't stay here."_

_I feel something like sand filling my throat, something like dust burning my eyes. My vision swims. "Don't you need me anymore?"_

_"I'm sorry, Dita. We're different now." He doesn't touch me. He doesn't smile. He speaks as if he's reciting a data entry, in a cool, dry monotone – as if it doesn't matter at all to him, what I do or what I am. "I guess this is goodbye."_

_In the glass, I see him turn to leave, and whirl to stop him—but he isn't there. When I turn, there's nothing there but the mirrors, my paper-white face trapped in each one._

I woke in my pod with a gasp, booting up in one sharp blow. The display in the door read nine o'clock. "It's late," I said to Zima when I got my bearings, and saw him leaning against one wall. Disconnecting from the pod, I stepped out on legs brittle as blown glass, my whole body weak in the wake of the dream. "Why is it so late?"

"Beats me. Pods were set for seven, but you didn't wake up. I couldn't get you to boot." He cocked an eyebrow. "Another dream?"

I pushed my hands through my hair and shuddered. "Yeah."

"Was I right?"

It took me a second to remember what he was talking about. _Maybe the next one will be a death dream too. _"Sort of."

"Well, I hate to wake you with bad news, but it seems they're not cutting us any slack. It's our first day back on duty, remember?" He pushed open the door and beckoned me into the hallway, wearing the wry ghost of a grin. "And we're already late for an engagement."

Zima briefed me on the elevator. Apparently, before I woke up, he'd received a summons from Aiko on our supervisors' behalf. They wanted us upstairs – _upstairs_ meaning the top floor, meaning the biggest offices and the highest-ranked bureaucrats, meaning something important was going on – as soon as possible. They hadn't said why, but according to a tip from Aiko, that morning had brought an unannounced visit from a pair of fairly big names – or at any rate, people it was vital we impress. She thought they were representatives from the ministry responsible for our financing. Which of course meant the whole building was in a panic, wheeling out the best of the new projects and slapping a fresh coat of paint on old ones. If there was one thing humans never felt they had enough of, it was money.

He and I weren't exactly new projects, but we were impressive nonetheless. I'd had to endure a lot of gawking sessions with the higher-ups, during my first few weeks of life; I assumed Zima'd had it even worse. But even now, years after that fuss had died down, we were still made to put on a show for every fat cat and bigshot who wandered in our front doors. We were the best our facility had to offer, which made us its primary claim to fame. We'd been very expensive, and highly experimental, and our supervisors paraded _our_ success as a means of proving _their _worth – as they saw it, if they could pull _us_ off, what couldn't they do?

There were few things I hated more. Zima could be charming, when he wanted to be, but I wasn't so lucky. I tended to spend these occasions staring at my feet and gritting my teeth, trying not to shoot off my mouth. So I couldn't help but drag my feet as I followed him, first down a corridor, then through a pair of huge, heavy doors; I doubt I could've budged one of them, had I tried, but he pushed them open like curtains. They gave way to a vast receiving hall, with high ceilings and parquet floors. Through picture windows, the sun poured in blindingly bright.

In the center of the hall were a cluster of people, and when she saw us, one broke off. She looked as though she were about to sweat right through the pits of her suit jacket. "Where have you _been_?" she hissed under her breath, so her guests wouldn't hear her lose her cool. "We had Aiko send the summons _an hour ago_!"

Zima and I exchanged a glance. "Our apologies, Ms. Ichida," he answered for us. "There was a malfunction with the pods."

"Well, you'd damn well better make up for it now."

The group was made up of another woman and two men – Mr. Satou and Ms. Nakajima, the visitors from the ministry, and our supervisors Ms. Ichida and Mr. Inoue. They were of higher rank than Ms. Yamane, so they had the privilege of showing us off for company. "You haven't met Zima and Dita yet, have you?" Ms. Ichida addressed her guests, going from livid to simpering in five seconds flat. "We like to think of them as our crown jewels."

I suppressed a snort. Mr. Satou – a reedy, frog-faced man, not as tall as Zima but close – nodded vaguely in our direction. "Yes, yes, I've met the data bank before. I remember when it was launched. The other one, no."

"Well, I've never met either of you. Ayano Nakajima; how do you do?"

"We're just fine, Ms. Nakajima. Up a little late, but fine." Zima flashed her a winning smile. "How are you finding the place so far?"

"Oh, it's a lovely facility. And everyone's been very nice." She tittered and batted her eyes behind their glasses, smoothing back a loose wisp of salt-and-pepper hair. _Good God. She's one of _those."But I've been most looking forward to meeting you."

I didn't know which I disliked more. The people like Mr. Satou, who so obviously considered us objects, or the people like Ms. Nakajima – the middle-aged women pining for thrills in dull marriages, who got their kicks flirting with boy-shaped 'coms like Zima. And it wasn't that I was jealous, either. It was just embarrassing to watch. "Now, why would you do a thing like that?" Zima said sweetly, well-accustomed to humoring her type. "I'm nothing special."

"Nonsense! You're a marvel of technology. I've been hearing so much talk of you, for such a long time; when we made our plans to drop by, I was so hoping to get a look." She rested a hand on her hip, looking him up and down. "And aren't you just the cutest thing!"

"Honestly, Ayano," Mr. Satou cut in, "it's a _machine._ Is that really the pertinent factor here?"

"I'm just saying, it's quite an accomplishment. These _brilliant_ people—" she swept her hand out to indicate Ms. Ichida, Mr. Inoue, the windows, the ceiling, whoever had_ really_ done the work she was so enamored of "—have not _only_ managed to build a persocom capable of storing and utilizing an entire _nation's_ worth of data, but they've managed to make him incredibly _adorable_ – and so charming, too!" She cut loose with a gale of laughter, equal parts schoolgirl giggling over her cootie-catcher and witch cackling over her cauldron. I forced myself not to wince. "They ought to be awfully proud."

While Ms. Nakajima went on fawning over Zima, Mr. Satou turned his gaze to me. As he inspected me, his eyes began to narrow, and he gestured to Ms. Ichida. "This one doesn't even look like a persocom," he informed her, still staring at me as if I were an animal in a zoo. "Where are its ear units?"

"Oh, they're the same as Zima's," Ms. Ichida assured him. To demonstrate, she actually reached over, turned my head to one side, and pushed back the hair feathered over my left ear. I stiffened – and I saw Zima glance at me, with warning eyes – but I behaved, and I didn't jerk away. "Just hidden under her hair."

"I see." I felt an urge to lance his swollen eyes like boils, drain the suspicion brewing there. The _contempt_—as though I had personally offended him. "Interesting choice."

"Yes, well, they're actually multifunctional. Zima and Dita both wear special shades, to assist them in their duties, and standard-model ears would make it difficult to wear them. Dita," she said, in the tone of voice you'd use to tell a dog to _sit_, "show Mr. Satou your shades."

_Sure, Ms. Ichida. Since you asked so nicely and all. _"I don't have them," I mumbled. "Zima does."

Before she could start snapping her fingers at him, he produced my shades from a pocket on his coat, handing them off to her. She pasted on her biggest, brightest suck-up smile. "See, the shades have magnetic arms," she said, and instead of asking me to put them on, decided to demonstrate herself; she shoved them over my eyes, none too gently of course, and they clicked into place. The sun-drenched room turned amber. "So that persocoms with ears like hers can wear them."

"And the magnets don't damage the computer?"

"They were specifically designed not to. They're strong enough to secure the shades, but not enough to affect the drive." She pushed up my bangs to let him get a better look at them. "And the shades themselves are multifunctional, too. They serve as sunglasses, in their basic mode, but they can also display data and images, and perform several other tasks specific to the computer to which they're registered. For example, Zima's shades have a tracker mode, which allows him to use his data to pinpoint and monitor almost any signal—" _not to mention a lying bastard mode,_ _which allows him to keep said signals a secret _"—and Dita's have an emergency shutdown mode, which allows Zima to manually override her systems when necessary."

Ms. Ichida went on talking, after that, but I didn't hear what she said. Well aware that – as May had said, that day in Ms. Kano's office – I was meant to be _seen and not heard_, I shut off my audio receptors and literally tuned out. It was better that way, I figured; they weren't speaking _to _me, only _about_ me, and if I couldn't hear them I wouldn't be tempted to mouth off. Standing there savoring the silence, I got to thinking my life would be much easier, if I could just mute human voices all the time. I wondered if they occupied their own frequency, one I could filter out. I wondered if there was an audio setting for that.

But I could only escape for so long. I didn't know if she had just grown bored of Zima, or if she honestly had an interest in me, but Ms. Nakajima wandered over just as Ms. Ichida removed my shades – apparently having managed to chatter about them for an entire fifteen minutes. "Now," I heard her demand, when I switched my audio back on, "what exactly does the little one do?"

"Dita is a data security program. She was built to protect Zima, from any number of threats to his data – hackers, bugs, system malfunctions, et cetera – and programmed to do so at any cost."

"So what? She's a walking, presumably talking – she doesn't seem terribly friendly, but I'm assuming she _does _speak – antivirus?" Ms. Nakajima looked at me skeptically. "Is that really cost-effective?"

Ms. Ichida threw Mr. Inoue a panicked glanced. I had expected this much – women like Ms. Nakajima, as much as they adored Zima, never seemed to like me – but the last thing they wanted was the people holding their pursestrings calling their spending into question. "Well, that's not all she does," he said as he swooped in, resting a hand on my shoulder. "She's also equipped to proactively eliminate external threats to data security. Outside of simple storage and defense, Zima and Dita also function as a search-and-destroy team – he uses his data to track the aforementioned threats, and she uses her attack programs to neutralize them."

"Mm." She seemed to consider that, still not wholly convinced. "So she's combat-class, then."

"Not _solely_ combat-class. But yes."

She studied me a second longer, still with that doubtful crease to her brow. Then, she shook her head, and snorted. "Then what in the world is she _dressed _as? Isn't that getup a little—I don't know, _impractical, _especially if she's a combat 'com?"

Without thinking, I blinked down at myself, feeling a flush climb my cheeks. Sure, my costume was complicated, maybe even impractical – but it was _mine._ I'd never wanted to wear anything else. "And what's this? Is she _blushing_?" She grabbed me by the chin and jerked my head up, to be sure. Up close, her skin reminded me of crumpled crepe paper, the whites of her eyes trellised with veins. "You spent _government money_ to give a data security 'com synthetic blood vessels?"

"No, we _never_—"

"Talk about cost-ineffective!"

I could feel the tension in the air. Well aware that I wasn't the only one being humiliated – that our failures as well as our victories fell on our supervisors' heads – I braced myself for what would come next. "Well, Ms. Nakajima," Mr. Inoue said, "as your colleague so eloquently put it, that's not really the pertinent factor here, is it? Dita's only an accessory. She can be easily remodeled or replaced."

"Exactly," Ms. Ichida added, seizing her chance for recovery like a drowning man would a raft. "Defense and attack programs are simple to remove and install. You make some excellent points, Ms. Nakajima, and I assure you both that if _any _of our units are found to be cost-ineffective, we'll be more than happy to have them recycled and switched out for more efficient models." They both began to drift methodically away from me, gravitating towards Zima as Ms. Ichida spoke. "What's really important is what can't be replaced – not easily, anyway. As you've noticed already, Zima is an absolutely unique feat of modern engineering, not to mention extraordinarily powerful and…"

My audio was still on, but her voice faded away. I couldn't see them, any of them, now that they'd moved from my line of sight, and it felt as though I couldn't turn my head. As though if I tried, the hinge that held it might crack, and I might come to pieces. As though someone had slit my casing and filled me with concrete, made of me a statue where I stood. It shouldn't have hurt like it did, hearing them say I was nothing, _only an accessory; _I _knew_ that, and it had never bothered me before. I didn't mind being replaceable, so long as I wasn't actually replaced.

Something cold began to crawl over me, twining itself around my limbs. My sensors indicated room temperature, but my skin felt like ice. Until I felt someone touch me, through what seemed a blanket of snow—until a warm, heavy hand slid over my shoulder, and squeezed it, and I knew it was Zima because I would know him anywhere. "Well, it's been lovely," I heard him say, "and I wish we could stay, but I'm afraid Dita and I have business elsewhere. We really must be going now."

"What?" Ms. Ichida's smile wavered, if only for a split second. An edge crept into her voice. "What business would that be? We haven't approved any additional activities for today."

"It's not a planned activity. Aiko just sent me a summons from Mr. Morita." I recognized the name of another of our supervisors, several rungs higher on the bureaucratic ladder. Zima cocked his head. "It was marked urgent," he said innocently, "but if you think it's more important that we stay here—"

"No, no," Mr. Inoue broke in, as we'd both known he would. "Please, go. We wouldn't want to keep Mr. Morita waiting, would we?" Through the teeth flashed in his thousand-watt smile, he told his guests, "We don't like to encourage negligence in our units, nor disrespect for authority. I'm afraid that if Mr. Morita needs them, we have no choice but to send them on their way."

"Of course, of course. I would do the same thing." Before we left, Ms. Nakajima squeezed in one last wink at Zima, wiggling manicured fingertips in a dainty wave. "It's been a real treat."

"Same to you, Ms. Nakajima. Mr. Satou." He bowed his head in her direction, then his, and took me by the hand. "We hope you'll enjoy the rest of your visit."

My hand in his, I followed him down the same corridor we'd taken coming up, to the same bank of elevators shining silver in the light. He didn't say anything. We stood there in silence, waiting for a car to come, and when it did he steered me gently inside; I just sort of fell against one wall, numb, while he did something with the keypad. Pressed something to stop the elevator, I thought, so that it wouldn't move, and the doors wouldn't open.

He came to me and crouched down to my level, held my face in his hands. When he pressed a kiss onto my forehead, the ice finally began to melt. "Dita, love. Don't listen to them."

"Don't listen to what?" I said bitterly. "The truth?"

"It's not the truth. No one could ever replace you." He kissed me again, on my forehead, then on both of my eyelids. As if to kiss away tears that weren't there, because I couldn't cry. "And they didn't mean what they said. They were just putting on an act, love, because that woman was jealous of you—they're not going to get rid of you."

_Jealous of me? _If I'd had the presence of processor, I'd have asked what he could possibly have meant by that. "You don't know that."

"Of course I do. I know everything, remember?" A smile tugged at his lips, only for a moment. Flickered on and then off like a lightbulb. As he looked at me, with eyes earnest like I rarely saw them – eyes like he'd had saying _I want that girl to find happiness, _like he'd had asking me if I loved him, like he had whenever he was _really_ serious, which wasn't often – he stroked my cheek with his thumb, wiping away those phantom tears. _Is this what it's like to want to cry, then? _I asked myself. _This feeling like I felt yesterday, on the terrace? This burning behind my eyes? _"And even if they tried," he said softly, "I would never let them take you away from me."

"You couldn't stop them."

"I'd find a way." His hands dropped from my face and he pulled me into his arms. Held me closer, held me tighter than he had in a long time—at least since that day when he came back, and maybe since before that. Maybe closer, maybe tighter, maybe fiercer than he'd ever held me, his face buried in my hair and mine in his coat. His warmth dissolved the last of the frost, eased that hot weight rolling in my eyes. His scent, in place of the concrete, filled me up. "I love you, Dita. Even if you don't believe it. Even if you can't say it. I love you, and only you – and there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep you close to me."


	11. Fun

**01100110 01110101 01101110 [Fun]**

Our first night back on duty, I didn't dream at all. And I woke at seven in the morning, as per the time set on the pod – but even though I was up on schedule, Zima was waiting for me.

He was just standing there, leaning against the wall. Same as the day before. He had this bag I'd never seen before, black leather like his coat, its long strap slung across his chest; other than that, nothing was different, except the way he was looking at me. Grinning at me, actually. His shades were pushed up, so I could see his eyes, and they weren't like they were that day on the roof. These weren't his thinking eyes, sucking in the light. That morning his eyes shone, almost glittered, with something I'd learned over time was anticipation – something I'd seen first in the launch lab, before I knew what it was.

But by then, I always knew when he was jazzed over something, because his eyes always reminded me of rubies. Whether in sunlight, starlight, or the fluorescent lights buzzing above our pods, they sparkled.

"What are you doing up?" I asked as I stepped out of the pod, closing the glass door behind me. "And what's with the bag?"

"I have a surprise for you." His grin broadened. "We're taking the day off."

"What do you mean, taking the day off? We've already had the last three days off. How much more vacation do you need?"

"It's not about more, it's about _better._ Things are getting too heavy around here. What I need – what we both need – is a vacation outside of these walls." Before I could ask how he thought that was possible, he grabbed my hand and we were out the door, heading for the staircase at the end of the hall. "And Aiko's got us listed as dispatched, so we're free to go. I messaged Ms. Yamane, told her somebody tried to break in – she thinks we're tracking down their signal right now."

"And—what is it we're _really_ doing, may I ask?"

"I already told you, we're taking the day off. Just follow me."

So I followed him. I followed him up the stairs, and through the lobby, and into an elevator flying past all forty floors. We didn't leave through the front doors, because the roads we took weren't city streets; as always, we cut our swath through a grid of rooftops, leaping from building to building with our coats' wings billowing like contrails. The first leg of the trip took us through the city, sailing southeast. Several miles in, the skyline began to shrink, as the city gave way to its suburbs – the towers of the business district dwindled to plazas and strip malls, themselves fading into a network of neighborhoods. There, we had to switch up our route. Fortunately, it was still too early for most people to be up, or awake enough to notice a couple of 'coms running around on their phone lines.

We blew through countless neighborhoods, the wires barely bowing beneath our boots. He followed them – and I followed him – all the way through one residential district, and then another, and then another still. By the time I began to smell salt, it seemed we'd been at it for hours. But I _did_ smell the salt, before I saw the sea. As we crossed into a little town, still with most of its shops closed – it was, I realized, still fairly early, though I felt like it ought to be noon – I caught my first glimpse of distant dunes, and the ocean beyond them. I understood what he meant to do. So when we landed on the roof of an arcade, which opened onto a boardwalk, which looked out onto the beach—when he took off his shades and grinned at me, with those dancing, flashing eyes, I'd already come up with a list of reasons not to do it.

"You can't be serious."

I didn't even dent his smile. "Data indicates," he informed me, "that when humans want to unwind, the beach is the first place they go. And you, my dear, could do with some serious unwinding."

"But this is—we can't just—" Frustrated, I flung my arm out towards the beach. From the corner of my eye, I could see the first few beachgoers begin to wander out onto it, spreading out towels and wedging umbrellas into the sand. "Zima," I demanded, "what do you expect us to _do_?"

"Oh, I have a whole list of things to do. It's going to be fun!"

For a second, I just stared at him, unable to believe he could be so obtuse. _How can he possibly think this is a good idea? _"This is completely illogical! We're lying to our supervisors to be here, we had to travel about a million miles to get here, and what's more, there's absolutely _nothing _we can accomplish here that's of any value to anyone! For God's sake, you're the _national data bank_, Zima! You don't go to the beach!"

He made a face. "I'm tired of being the national data bank. It's too much work."

"It's your _job_! It's supposed to be work!"

Then it was his turn to look at me, for a long time. Too long. He sighed, and his smile finally ebbed; for the first time that day, the sparkle dimmed in his eyes. None of it satisfied me like I'd hoped. "You know, if we were human," he said, "doing the work we do, we'd get days off for real. We wouldn't have to wait for test periods, or lie just to leave headquarters. We'd have weekends. Vacations. We could go out, and go home." _If we were human, we couldn't do the work we do, _I thought but didn't say. He knew it as well as I did. "Can't we not _be_ our jobs, Dita? Just for one day? Can't we pretend I'm not the national data bank, and you're not my bodyguard, and—be just Zima and Dita, having fun at the beach?" The faintest glint of a grin returned to his face. "You _do_ know how to have fun, don't you?"

_Do I?_ I wasn't even sure what fun _was._ I wasn't built to have fun, or to want to. I knew what it was to _enjoy_ something, sure; I took pleasure in lots of things. Like a hot bath after a long mission, or the view from the terrace at sunset, or anytime I was with Zima doing anything. But none of that was…_fun_, per se.

_Fun, noun:_ _a source of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure._ Wasn't amusement like laughter? So far as I could remember, I'd never laughed even once. I didn't know if I could.

"Of course I do," I answered anyway, because I wasn't going to admit otherwise.

"Then prove it."

I looked at him. I looked down at the beach. I looked around at the town below us, stretching its limbs and rubbing its eyes. As I watched, shopkeepers opened their doors, and rolled up their gates; it was faint, mingled with salt and sunblock, but I caught the scent of burnt sugar wafting from a restaurant down the block. I saw women walking their dogs down the sidewalks, and kids on rollerblades whizzing past them.Across the way, in a ramshackle theme park, the lights on a Ferris wheel blinked on.

I sighed. Glanced down at my coat. "You don't expect us to go like this, do you?"

I never was much good at saying no to Zima. Not because he was persuasive, though he was; not because he was persistent, though he was that, too. Because my knees went weak when he smiled. "Of course not," he said, as that glint of a grin went flashbulb-bright. "I'm more than prepared."

We found a bathroom to change in, down on the boardwalk. Zima said that was how it was done. I wouldn't have minded changing in front of him – I didn't have anything to hide – but I went along with it, and shut myself in a stall beyond the door marked _Ladies' Room._ Unfolding the bundle of clothing he'd brought for me in his bag, I saw that it was a black tankini, with a tiny gold buckle just below the V-shaped neck. _Well, at least it's not too bad, _I thought as I stripped down and pulled it on, recalling pictures I'd seen of human girls in bathing suits. I might not have had anything to hide, but that didn't mean I wanted to strut around in a string bikini. _It doesn't show much more than my costume. Maybe even a little less, around the midriff. _

When I came out to meet him, he was waiting for me, in a black T-shirt and boardshorts. I knew it was traditional for men – or things shaped like them – to go shirtless at the beach, but I was glad he didn't. The more skin he showed, the thicker grew shades of the maintenance bay, and how vulnerable he'd looked there.

"What a beautiful day." Out on the beach, he laced his fingers and turned out his hands, stretching his arms above his head. I sifted the sand between my toes. "Do I know how to pick 'em or what?"

I rolled my eyes. "You're amazing, Zima."

"I know, right?" He set the bag down in the sand, and bent down to dig through it. "Okay, first things first. Humans like to swim at the beach. We're going in the water."

"What?" I blanched and blinked out at the ocean, churning with foam-capped waves. It was pretty enough to _look_ at, but—actually getting _in_ it? That was an entirely different story. "Isn't that—I don't know, dangerous?"

"Nah. But I thought you might think so." At last, he surfaced from the bag with a crumpled pink thing, a roll of translucent plastic. When he unfurled it, I realized that it was a blow-up raft – uninflated, of course. "I'm going to swim," he told me, "and you can't stop me. But in order to facilitate your unwinding, I brought this."

"That." I frowned. "And how, exactly, do you intend to blow _that_ up?"

He cocked his head to one side. "Huh. I guess I never thought of that." It didn't seem to bother him, though. Glancing around the beach – it still wasn't crowded, by any means, but every minute a new face crested the dunes – his eyes lit on a kid in swim trunks, traipsing past with his skateboard under one arm. "Hey, you!" The kid stopped and whipped his head around, looking in every direction but ours. Finally, he blinked over at us, with the dumbest expression I thought I'd ever seen. "Yeah, you. Come over here and help the lady with her raft, would you?"

The kid snorted. "Why should I?"

"Because I can make it worth your while." Shoving his hand into a pocket of his boardshorts, he came up with a wad of balled-up paper notes; I wasn't sure what they were, at first, until he peeled one off and offered it up. Then, the boy's eyes widened, and so did mine. "What do you say?"

He didn't have to ask again. The kid swiped the bill and got to work blowing up the raft, which I might've found impressive if I weren't so busy being stunned. "Zima! Where—where the hell did you _get _that?"

He flattened out the wad of bills and tucked them into his bag, in a small zippered pocket on one side. "If we were human," he said by way of explanation, raising his eyebrows at me, "doing the work we do, we'd be getting paid a lot more than that."

Without another word, he sauntered on down the beach, heading for the ocean. All I could do was stand there and watch the kid wrestle with the raft. It took him awhile – and the whole thing was so awkward as to be novel – but eventually, he got it blown up, and promptly took off with cash in hand. _Don't think about it too much, _I told myself, as I took the raft and followed Zima's prints in the sand. It wasn't that I didn't think it made sense, what he'd said about getting paid. We'd worked for the government our entire lives, every waking moment, for nothing but the clothes on our backs and the pods that were our homes. But it wasn't fair, it wasn't _meant _to be fair, and wherever he was getting this stuff – that money, our suits, everything he'd used for the date – I was afraid it would land him in trouble. _There's nothing you can do._

I dipped my toes in a tidepool first, before I got in for real. It was warm. Bathwater warm, and a rich, rippling turquoise; I almost expected my foot to come out the same shade. But it wasn't paint, it was water, and it didn't hurt me as I waded in. Even as it closed over my knees, over my hips, even as it soaked through my tankini it only felt good—I mean, I'd _known_ it would, I guess. I'd taken plenty of baths. I knew very well I was waterproof. Still, I supposed 'coms were like cats that way – our instincts rebelled against water.

I couldn't see Zima anywhere. That unsettled me, a little bit, but I wasn't about to duck my head under to look for him. So I just climbed onto the raft and drifted, let the current carry me out to sea. I felt the waves bobbing gently beneath me, the breeze tousling my hair; the sun, like a yellow pearl, hung at the sky's blue throat, and flowed through seams the water couldn't find. I pulled my shades, perched on my head, down over my eyes. There was something magnificent about this specific sunlight, different from that on the roof. I was farther from it, but it was…purer, somehow. A deeper, sweeter warmth.

Maybe I floated for five minutes. Maybe an hour. Maybe a day. Maybe the rushing tides, mixed with the cries of seagulls, lulled me into sleep mode. "Hey."

I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Jesus!" I gasped, jerking up to see Zima smiling at me. "Don't—don't sneak up on me like that."

"I'm sorry. Were you relaxed?" He leaned in and kissed me on the forehead, and I could smell the salt on his skin. He was glistening all over, the gel washed out of his hair, his bangs plastered over one eye. I reached over and pushed them away. "Told you you'd like this. Even better than the roof, right?"

"It'd be better if you wouldn't disappear like that. Were you underwater all that time?"

"Sure I was. I'm a regular fish."

I bit down on my lower lip, eyeing him nervously through my shades. "Just…be careful, okay? I don't want you to go damaging yourself."

He kissed me again, this time on the lips. "I know, love. I won't."

He slid beneath a wave as it rolled in, leaving me there on the raft. And I _tried_ to believe him, I really tried, but anxiety gnawed at me like a botfly; every few minutes, I found myself lifting my head and my shades to peer out at the water, craning for a glimpse of him. I had to, I couldn't help myself. My program was designed to bug me, relentlessly, when it sensed that he was in danger – whether that danger was _real _danger, or dumbshit danger like this. And the longer he was out of sight, the worse it got.

"Listen, Zima," I said to him when he came up next, "I'm sorry, but can you _please_ find something else to do?"

He cracked a mischievous grin. "Am I making you crazy?"

"Yes."

"Let me hear."

I sighed and let him press his head to my chest, to listen to the buzz of my software reprimanding me. He widened his eyes. "Wow. I really pissed it off." Zima always had been the only one who'd ever done that – made a distinction between my program and me. I'd never been able to decide if I liked it. "Let the girl relax, would you?" he said to the angry machinery inside of me, as if that made any sense at all. "I'm fine."

"Be serious, Zima. There must be _something_ else humans do for fun at the beach – something that doesn't involve the ocean."

"Well, sure there is. There's all kinds of things." Sinking down until just his head and shoulders broke the surface, he rested his chin on my stomach, or the pale sliver of it bisecting my suit. "We could get some people," he suggested, "and play beach volleyball."

I didn't know what volleyball was – or how playing it on the beach was anything special – but I thought I'd rather snarf trojans than subject myself to more beachgoers. After our encounter with that idiot boy, I felt no need to sample any more of this particular breed of humanity. "But—there's hardly anyone out yet," I said, attempting to be tactful.

"Take another look, love." He nodded towards the shore. "You were unwinding a long time."

Looking up, I saw that the beach was teeming with people, a forest grown up around those few scattered umbrellas and a rainbow of towels carpeting the sand. On them, humans unpacked picnic baskets, and between them vendors pushed carts of soda and sweet ice. Nearer to the surf, children clustered around bags of buckets and shovels, erecting wet, sloppy forts of sand and shells; a few of them splashed around in the tidepools, and still more drew with sticks in the sand. I heard laughing and shouting and the tinkle of the vendors' bells, music piping from the carousel on the boardwalk. As we waded in, I even noticed the crowds in the water all around us, the people with their own rafts and inner tubes riding the waves.

Back on the shore, Zima dug in his bag for a towel, and wiped his face before tossing it to me. As conspicuous as I felt – maybe _I_ didn't look like a 'com, but he did, and we weren't a common sight at the beach – he was as carefree as ever, scanning the now-swarming beach for something to do. Thankfully, he appeared to have forgotten all about volleyball – but that only gave way to an even more ridiculous idea. "Let's get sweet ice," he said suddenly, eyes drawn to a passing cart. "Classic beach pastime. I can't believe I didn't think of it before."

Before I could stop him, he'd produced more money from the bag, and proceeded to flag down the cart. "Two, please. Cherry and…umm…grape."

I clapped a hand to my forehead and groaned. "And what," I asked him, as the puzzled vendor went about scooping two cones, "do you plan to do with that?"

He shrugged. "I don't know." Exchanging a bill for the cones, he looked down and saw a pair of human children, scuttling down the beach in striped swimsuits. A girl and a boy, probably no older than five. In one hand, the little girl clutched a wrinkled paper note. "Hey, hold on," he turned and said to them, when their stubby legs skidded to a stop at the cart. "Are you guys getting sweet ice?"

The kids looked at each other, then up at him, practically falling backwards in the process. The girl nodded.

"You want these?"

He leaned down and held out the cones. After a second, they reached out and snatched them, one apiece, and scampered off in the opposite direction. "Thanks!" I heard the girl squeak, before they disappeared behind an umbrella.

"Are you satisfied?" I said as the cart rolled away.

For no reason at all, he took me by the waist and spun me around, right there in front of everyone. He kissed me right there in front of everyone, too. He kissed me and he set me down and it didn't matter that people must've been staring, that my cheeks were hotter than the sand; for a split second, nothing mattered, except the smile on his face. "Immensely."

Then – all of a sudden – his eyes lit up, as though bidden by a switch. "Sandcastles!"

"Excuse me?"

"Sandcastles," he said again, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Humans _love_ making sandcastles. Let's do that, shall we?"

I had a better idea. Spreading the towel he'd brought out on the sand, I situated myself on it, and slid my shades back over my eyes. "How about you do it," I said, "and I'll watch?"

"Fine by me."

First, he begged sand tools off a couple of kids, building their own castle nearby; they lent him buckets, one big and one small, and a shovel, and a hoe. All of them in primary-colored plastic. He started by filling the buckets with sand – that dense, damp sand nearest the ocean, sand that kept a bucket's shape even after it was turned out. Again and again, he scooped sand into those buckets, plunked them down face-first and slid them gently back up. Sometimes he used the big one, sometimes the small one, with no pattern I could discern. I didn't know what kind of castle he could make with all of his columns clumped beside each other, instead of stacked in tiers, but I figured I wasn't supposed to. Zima being Zima, I figured he had his reasons, even if they made no sense to me.

He filled a good chunk of the beach with short, stout towers – four square feet, at least. They were scattered in branches and clusters, following the blueprints in his head. I still didn't get it, but I kept watching him, as he picked up the hoe and began, very carefully, to file down said towers with its flat edge. He went around to every single one and sliced them all into prisms, cylindrical sides crumbling beneath the blade of the hoe. On some, he slid a wedge off the top, to make them small and squat; others became towers in earnest, sleek and slender, as tall as the big bucket allowed. He kept them all ruler-straight, smoothing out dents with patience, precision, and wet sand. The whole time he never said a word, never so much as looked up. Had I spoken, I didn't think he'd have heard.

After awhile, he was drawing a crowd. Or not a crowd, exactly, but I wasn't the only one watching him; one by one, the people around us stopped what they were doing, setting down their books and lowering their sunglasses to gawk at whatever it was he was building. "What's he _doing_?" I heard a woman whisper behind me, when he was just about done with the hoe.

"He's building something, isn't that obvious?" answered another voice, also female.

"Yes," said the first voice, "but _what_? I can't tell."

"Beats me. Whatever it is, I think I'd have given up by now." The second woman clicked her tongue. "How do you get them to do that, anyway? Is it some kind of software, or what?"

"Forget the software, I want to know where to get that model! I've never seen one like him before."

"Neither have I, come to think of it. Whose do you think he is?"

"I don't know." A few seconds later, I felt one of them tap me on the shoulder, and turned around. "Excuse me, miss?" said the owner of the first voice, a middle-aged woman in a bathing suit with a skirt. "That persocom—he wouldn't happen to belong to you, would he?"

I pushed up my shades and frowned at her. "No, he doesn't _belong_ to me. He's my—he's my—"

_He's my _what_?_ I found myself entirely unable to say. He certainly wasn't my _property_, but I didn't want to call him my friend; we were much more than just friends, Zima and I, and much more than just partners. It wouldn't sound right to say he was my coworker, or my charge. I knew humans had special words for each other, that they used along with words like _love_ – humans had words like _boyfriend_ and _girlfriend_, or _husband_ and _wife _when they were married, or even _lover_ when they didn't know what they were. But I had no word for it, what Zima was to me. He just was what he was. We were what we were.

So instead of answering, I just sniffed, and lowered my shades, and turned back around. As insurance against more questions, I sort of tossed my hair, in such a way that I knew they'd glimpse of one of my ears; sure enough, halfway through a hiss about how _rude_ kids these days were, the second woman cut herself short with an _oh_. And for a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then, the first voice piped up again. "Do you suppose they're a matched set?"

I rolled my eyes.

Meanwhile, Zima had begun embellishing his sand sculpture, and I had begun to realize what it was. At first – when he was dragging the blunt end of the hoe in long, sinuous lines, throughout the sand around his collection of columns – I still couldn't tell. But then he started pocking the surface of the structures, leaving thumbprints across and down each in even lines. He grabbed a few shells and pressed them into their bases, lined the paths between towers in rows of smooth, flat pebbles. Finding a stick in the sand, he plucked off a handful of twigs, and stuck them standing up all throughout his little world.

"It's a cityscape," I announced, when it dawned on me. _The towers were supposed to be buildings. I should've known. _"Windows—" the thumbprints "—cars—" the pebbles "— and people—" the twigs "—right?"

"Exactly right, love. But it's not finished yet."

He snapped off another twig and broke it in two unequal pieces, one nearly twice as long as the other. Then, he reached inside of his bag, and tore out a strip of the black fabric lining the leather; from its frayed edge, he pulled a thin, silky thread, which he also snapped into two more even lengths. Those, he knotted about a quarter-inch down from the top of each twig, so that one only end hung long and loose.

While I sat there wondering if all that citybuilding had finally cracked his drive, he tore what remained of the black strip in half. I thought he was going to halve the halves, too, but he only split them part of the way up. By the end that wasn't ripped, he tied a strip apiece in the center of both twigs, and stood them up apart from the others – on top of the tallest tower he had built.

He straightened up, dusting his hands off, grinning at his masterpiece. I tilted my head. There was something very familiar about that pair of twigs, looking down on his city, those threads whipping in the breeze off the sea. Those half-split scraps of fabric, fluttering like black wings.

"Zima…"

I said his name almost as a reflex, in a tone redolent of years of sighs and shaken heads. But before I could actually _do_ either, something sort of struck me, out of absolutely nowhere. Not embarrassment, not exasperation, not anything I'd expect to feel at a time like this—nor, for that matter, anything I'd felt before. It was this fluttering, bubbling sensation, that kindled in my chest and spread like a flame. Before I knew it – before I could think to stop it – it burst from my mouth, and I was laughing.

It felt good! Never once had I suspected that laughter felt so _good._ And once I started, I couldn't stop; suddenly, everything seemed funny, and I was standing there cracking up like an idiot and what's more, I didn't care. For once, I wasn't worried about anything. For a buoyant, transient moment in time, the weight of the world had dropped from my shoulders, leaving only the two of us and our little city in the sand. Just me and Zima beside me, half-smiling, looking at me like I was someone completely new – like I was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen.


	12. Love Shaped

**01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00101101 01110011 01101000 01100001 01110000 01100101 01100100 00001101 00001010 [Love-Shaped]**

Around four o'clock, we left the beach, for what Zima deemed Phase Two of our mini-vacation. When humans came to the beach, he said, it was traditional to spend at least some time on the boardwalk – playing arcade games, riding theme park rides, buying all manner of confections from stalls reeking of grease. And if Data Indicated it, we had to do it.

Thus, we found ourselves on the boardwalk, after changing into our respective sets of boardwalk-appropriate clothes. Ever prepared, Zima had brought those too, and we slipped into the same bathroom – now packed with squalling toddlers, frazzled parents, and kids flinging streamers of toilet paper over stall doors – to change. My shoes for the day were black gladiator sandals, studded with faux-steel grommets and buckles. The clothes themselves were a black denim skirt, about the same length as my costume's shorts, and a form-fitting T-shirt that was, at first glance, white.

Then, I turned it around. Emblazoned across the back were a pair of black angel's wings, sprinkled with silver glitter and rhinestones. Had he been there, I would've glared daggers at him – that, or flushed redder than cherry sweet ice. Probably both. Since he wasn't, all I could do was groan to myself, and – being as it was my only choice – pull on the shirt.

"Well, aren't you a gigabyte of gorgeous?" he greeted me outside the bathroom, in an outfit not much different than what he'd worn on the beach. Just another black T-shirt – it had a logo on the front, though for what I wasn't sure – and a pair of black jeans with sneakers. I didn't know if he knew how it comforted me, him sticking to his color like that, but I was grateful for it regardless. "What'd you think of the new gear?"

"I think you know very well what I thought," I answered, just barely keeping a lid on the blush brewing under my skin. "So tell me this. If we're not_ being_ our jobs today, why do I have to wear mine on my back?"

We began heading down the boardwalk towards the arcade, amid a crowd of stringy-haired, sunburnt humans dragging themselves up from the beach. As we walked, he slung an arm around my shoulders. "Hey, it's only fair. If you're such a good little guardian that you can't even let me swim, you ought to own it, right?"

"That wasn't my—"

"Besides," he cut me off with a grin, squeezing me close to him, "guardian or not, you're my angel all the time."

Inside, the arcade was cool and dark, a den of blinking screens and flickering lights. There weren't many people there, aside from the kid staffing the prize counter – which amounted to a register and a series of shelves and hooks, dripping with tatty stuffed animals – and that was fine with me. If we had to waste our time on ridiculous human rituals, I much preferred that we do so in peace.

Producing more of his mysteriously-acquired cash, Zima fed a few bills to a contraption wedged into one corner, and it spat out a handful of glistening, gold-painted coins. "So it's pretty simple," he said as he dumped them into a pocket of his bag. "You find a machine you like, you feed it a coin, you play the game. Easy as falling off an analog."

"And I want to do this _why_?"

"Because it's fun!" he said blithely. "And because if you win, you get tickets, and if you get enough tickets you get a prize."

I wrinkled my nose. "That crap we saw when we came in? You couldn't _pay _me to drag one of those things around with me. Why would I want to spend money to win one?"

"Must I tell you again? It's the—"

"—_experience_, love." Before he could say them, I stole the words from his mouth, pet name and all. He smiled, and I sighed. "I shouldn't have asked."

I had known what an arcade was, basically. I'd seen them from the outside before. But I'd never realized the sheer _volume _of an arcade before, in terms of wailing, flashing, intensely obnoxious machines per square foot; I found it hard to imagine someone having come up with all of those games, much less physically built them. There were fighting games, and racing games, and gambling games, to scratch the surface. There were games that took place on a city street one minute, and in outer space the next – games that let you play as a warlock or a mercenary, or a lion prowling the savanna. Games that had you flying helicopters and wielding laser guns, and mauling monsters with graphics so sharp they made me shudder.

Some were hard to win. Others were easier. There were probably 'coms out there programmed to understand those games, to know their ins and outs and work them over like I did a hacker, but I wasn't one of them – in other words, for the most part I lost. Repeatedly. Frustratingly. My prey escaped, or my helicopter crashed, or the monster swallowed me whole. In racing games I made all the wrong turns, and in gambling games I made all the wrong bets. I just wasn't _good_ at arcade games, I was eventually forced to conclude; I wasn't designed to think hypothetically, to ask myself _what if I were the captain of a pirate ship? _or _what if I were hunting aliens on the moon? _and act accordingly. I was used to facing_ real_ threats. I was used to something real being at stake.

And I seemed to have rotten luck, to boot. Having given up entirely on anything with a joystick or a plastic gun, I had retired at one point to one of several gambling games, a great black hulk of a console with a massive screen and a built-in stool. Climbing up onto said stool, I dropped in a coin and watched the screen blip to life. On it appeared a CGI model of a wheel, spangled in a rainbow of colors; the object of the game, simply enough, was to smack a button and stop the wheel as it spun. Each coin gave you three tries, and if the needle landed on the same color all three times, your prize was a windfall of tickets. Two of the same color and you'd net about half that. Three different colors got you zip.

"Damn it!" Down to my last coin, I slammed a fist into the console. He'd been absorbed in some dumb fishing game, for an inordinate amount of time, but when he heard me Zima appeared out of nowhere – before I could so much as turn to look for him. "This thing hates me," I explained to him, feeding it the lonely coin in my palm. "Watch."

The wheel on the screen began spinning lightning-fast, each color blazing by the needle six hundred times a second. I may not have been designed to think hypothetically, but I should, at least, have had decent reflexes – should have been able to catch those colors, when they were where I wanted them to be. Should have beat that stupid game by then. But victory slipped through my fingers, again and again, coin after coin. I always seemed to hit that button too late. And it wasn't that I _cared_ or anything, it wasn't that it _mattered_—it was just that it pissed me off.

"See?" I griped as the screen irised out, leaving us with a last glimpse of my final score – red, blue and yellow. Not a match in the bunch. "I haven't won once. You call this _fun_?"

He raised an eyebrow. "How long have you been playing?"

"Long enough to use up all those coins you gave me."

At that, he let out a long, low whistle, as if my failure were so exceptional it impressed him. I answered his smirk with a scowl. "Well, it doesn't make sense," he amended, studying the machine. "These things aren't random, you know. They're supposed to look that way, but they're not; all these gambling games are rigged. The needle doesn't hit the color nearest it when you punch the button – it hits the color its algorithm tells it to hit."

"So what? It's impossible to win?"

"Not impossible. The odds are weighted in the house's favor, so the chances are less than what ought to be probable, but it's certainly not impossible to win; in fact, it's designed to _let_ you win, a preset percentage of the time. If it didn't, no one would ever play." He shook his head. "Either this thing's window of opportunity is ridiculously slim," he decided, "or it's glitching. I mean, I must've given you a metric assload of coins."

I frowned. "As _deeply_ scientific as your units of measure are," I told him, "and as sure as I am that you think you know what you're talking about, _I_ know a thing or two about glitchy computers, and this thing doesn't seem broken to me. I'm pretty sure it just hates me."

Arms folded in thought, he tilted his head and blinked at the console. Immersed as he was in the infinitely intriguing mystery of why I couldn't win a damn arcade game, I didn't think he'd even heard what I said. "That's right. This thing _is_ a computer, isn't it?"

"Duh." I sat back in the stool and snorted. "It's our great-grandfather. Pay your respects."

"I'm just saying, we speak the same language. Maybe I can…sweet-talk it, if you know what I mean." He flashed me a grin as he popped an ear open, twirling a cable around one finger. "Convince it to ease up."

My jaw nearly hit the floor. "_Zima_!" Ignoring me, he drifted away to circle the machine, presumably on the hunt for a connection port. I tried to keep my voice low, so the prize counter kid wouldn't come back to investigate; having had about as much humiliation as I could take the day before, I was_ not_ going to be thrown out of a seedy beach arcade for trying to cheat at a gambling game. I didn't think what was left of my pride could bear it. But by that point, his stupidity bordered on belligerent, and it took everything I had not to ream him out. "Get back here! You are _not _going to try to hack _an arcade game_!"

"Not _hack_, love," he said sweetly, bending to pry open the machine's maintenance hatch. "I'm just going to negotiate with it, that's all."

"Like that custom unit tried to _negotiate_ with you?"

He made a noise like the sucking in of breath through clenched teeth, clapping a hand to his chest in mock offense. "Ouch. Low blow."

"I'm _just saying_," I threw his words back at him, "I would think you'd have more sympathy."

"And yet shockingly, I don't. I'm a cold-hearted bastard, aren't I?"

With that, he disappeared behind the console, to proceed with his _negotiation_. There was nothing I could do but sit there and fume. "I swear to God, Zima," I hissed, "if that kid comes back here and kicks us out, I'm _never_ going to forgive you."

"I'd expect as much."

"And if you fry your systems poking around that piece of junk, I'm _not_ going to fix you."

"Duly noted."

"And I—" Suddenly, I found myself cut off by a trumpet-blast from the machine's speakers, the leitmotif for every round of the game. Unbidden by a coin, the wheel assembled itself onscreen, in an animation already burned into my eyes – a thousand slivers of color sprouting like sharks' teeth from all corners, and converging in a flurry of pixellated stars and hearts. "Wow," I said as the wheel began to spin, just slightly dumbfounded at his success. "It worked."

"Of course it worked." Zima emerged wearing a satisfied smile, his cable zipping back into its port. "Try it out."

So I hit the big red button on the console, sending the wheel screeching to a halt. It landed on purple, and a little window in one corner of the screen bleeped and turned purple, too. When it kicked up again, I waited five seconds and then smacked the button again – earning myself, for the first time in five quillion tries, a matching second square. A second and then a third, on my last shot. All three windows lit up purple, and began blinking, and I'd have been lying if I said it wasn't a rush. "Hey, what do you know?" I marvelled as the speakers sang, a slot on the console churning out a paper ribbon of tickets. "That must have been some negotiation."

"Well, you know me," Zima said, with a wink at the monitor. "I can be very persuasive."

At the counter, I got to choose my prize, even though it was technically Zima who'd "won" the game. All I'd really done was punch a button. But he insisted, because apparently that was a human custom as well; it was traditional, he said, for the male half of a couple to win a prize for the female, and data not only indicated but _demanded_ that I pick a cheap stuffed animal to prove his mastery of the arcade. So I decided on a panda, plump and button-eyed and with only a few seams coming loose. With it in tow, we left the arcade to explore the rest of the boardwalk, and tick off what remained on Zima's list.

We had our hands stamped at the theme park, a rust-coated wonderland of rickety rides and overpriced games. There, we waited in long lines of loud, sweaty humans, to climb aboard these light-up deathtraps Zima kept saying would be _fun_. And the carousel was harmless, if undignified; the ferris wheel, I could stand. But the teacups were the last straw. After that, I put my foot down – metaphorically, of course, since the damn thing left me so dizzy I hardly knew where my feet _were_ – and we left, which was fine with him anyway, since he'd decided it was high time he bought more food we couldn't eat. This time, it was a bundle of skewers from a street stall, stacked with some kind of spicy-smelling meat. Cheerful as could be, he stood there on the boardwalk handing them out like tissues, while I pretended not to know him.

Afternoon faded slowly into evening, and the sun went down in flames over the sea. In the humid dusk, we wove in and out of little boardwalk shops, crammed with souvenirs that cost five yen to churn out and fifteen hundred to buy – oysters with googly eyes glued to their shells, T-shirts with "clever" phrases ironed on, shotglasses printed with the name of the town. Often, I was asked what model my 'com was, and where I'd bought him. Even more often – usually when Zima had wandered off – I was approached by a human boy and asked a question that didn't make any sense, which according to Zima was called a pick-up line. He seemed to find the whole thing hilarious.

"Let's go back to the beach," he said after awhile, when the last lick of sun had fizzled out in the ocean. By then, the crowds had begun to thin, and there were more stars out than people.

"Why? You want to swim in the dark?"

"No." He turned his gaze to the sky, a watercolor in marbled blue and back. "I want to look at the stars."

That late at night, the beach was empty. The trashcans were overflowing, and a few half-melted castles dotted the sand, but the humans had packed up their towels and gone home; it was just us and the endless ocean, the waves crashing onto the shore. The sand cool under our feet, our shoes having been shucked on the dunes. The gentle breeze playing with my ponytail.

"It's nice out here," I said quietly, aware that to speak too loudly would be to break the spell. "Without all the people."

"Yeah." He sat down a few feet from the surf, and lay back in the sand. After a moment's thought, I lay next to him. "Peaceful."

Silence settled on us like a blanket, thick and soft. Broken only by the whisper of waves. Overhead, the sky was a velvet drape, encrusted in jewels; out here away from the shops' lights, we could see every star sharp as cut glass, and there was barely an inch of blue between each. It seemed they'd been painted on in glittering clumps. At night, the sky became the sea, and the sea the sky – both, I saw, were the rich blue-black of ink, both sprinkled with stars. Either real stars or their reflections, sparkling on the water, washing to shore with the tides.

Sometimes, a star would start to drift, and I'd realize it was a satellite. Tricky things, satellites. Hard to catch. To the stars, they were both sisters and strangers, near-identical and yet far from alike; stars were born and stars could die, and most of all stars lived. Stars breathed. Not oxygen, but heat and light, flowing from bright mouths in solar sighs. And satellites—were floating hunks of metal, heavenbound but man-made. Blinking gnats, next to the stars. They paled in comparison.

"What are you thinking about?"

Zima's voice woke me from the trance of silence, snapped the sky's hold on my gaze. I glanced over at him. "Not much," I answered, shrugging against the sand. "Just trying to figure out which ones are stars, and which are satellites."

"Does it matter?" A half-smile flicked at one corner of his mouth. Even though the sun had gone down – even though there was only a shard of moon – the starlight left no shadows on his face. "They're both beautiful."

I felt my cheeks warm, for no reason I could discern. Maybe because of the way he was looking at me. That night, his eyes smoldered, like a gas flame kept on low; that night, his eyes reminded me of an oil painting, a shade of red so rich it seemed daubed on with a brush. "Come here," he said after a second, that half-smile leavening his tone.

He slid his arm around me, pulled me into him, and I curled up against his side. Then, he did something he'd never done before. He pushed a hand up the back of my T-shirt, unsticking it from my skin, scratching between my shoulder blades and down my spine; it was an alien sensation, but not a bad one. Far from it, actually. Before I could stiffen, or squirm, or ask him what the hell he was doing, I felt tingles bloom in the wake of his fingers. I felt my limbs slacken of their own accord. Like I had when he'd kissed me in the maintenance bay, I felt flutters underneath my skin, and gooseflesh stippling its surface – never mind that I shouldn't have been _able_ to get goosebumps, just like I shouldn't have been able to blush. As though bidden by his touch, they appeared anyway.

So I lay still and let him rub my back, for a stretch of time that was as close to bliss as I thought I'd ever come. I spaced out, shut my eyes. With my face nestled into his chest – for once without the cushion of his coat – his scent seeped through me, different than usual. Salt and sand, mostly. The earthy, sun-baked smell of the beach. The starched cotton in his shirt. It wasn't familiar, but it was still Zima; beneath the fingerprints of the day, something I knew lingered in his skin.

I almost didn't hear him when he finally spoke. "You know, Dita," he said, sliding his fingers in slow circles over the small of my back, "aside from the day I met you, I think this might have been the best day of my life."

"Why? Because you got to win me a crappy stuffed animal, ride those horrible teacups, and hand out tanizaki—"

"Yakitori, love."

"—_yakitori_ to strangers on the boardwalk?"

"Not quite." He sort of chuckled, not much spirit behind the sound. Even without looking up – without getting a glimpse of his face, or his eyes swallowing the stars – I could tell his thoughts had thickened. "Or—in a sense. I know you don't much care for them, but I think it's good to have those experiences. They open your eyes, a little bit at a time. Broaden your mind. I learned more today than I have in years."

"You know everything. What's left to learn?"

"A better question would be what's _knowing_, anyway? If I have a thousand images on file for the white-sand beaches of Makalawena, is that the same as having seen them? If I have a thousand megs of data on horseback riding in the Andes, is that the same as having done it?" He sighed. "If there's one thing I do know, it's that knowledge without experience is useless. _Knowing everything_ hasn't made me any happier, or my life any fuller; it's only made me want what I can't have." The faintest smile slid back into his voice, diluting its vinegar. "But days like this—they make me feel _alive_."

Suddenly, I was ashamed of myself, for being so difficult about—well, everything. _I didn't know it meant that much. _"Zima—"

"There's so much _to_ the world, Dita. So much more than rooftops and telephone poles. Our little universe gets smaller every day, and we're stuck inside it missing out on what's real." The earth seemed to shift as he sat up, bringing me with him. He slipped his hand out of my shirt and his arm around my waist – held me against him, but didn't look at me, his gaze still lost in the sky. "I don't care about _knowing_ things; I want the chance to _do _them. I want to see things, hear things—_feel_ things—you can't _feel _data, you know? It's just numbers. And maybe it's more than a persocom should hope for, but I want a life that's more than that."

I wouldn't say it was _bitter_, the way he spoke that night. More like wistful. More like sad. And there was nothing I could do, as much as it hurt to hear it; if you're sitting in a tree, and it says _I don't want to be a tree, _what are you supposed to tell it? If you're looking at the sun, and it says _I don't want to be the sun, _what are you supposed to say? _It is what it is. You are what you are._

"It doesn't matter what we want."

"It could." At last, his eyes left the stars to look at me. They weren't quite sad, in that moment, but they weren't quite happy, either. Fixed on mine, they hung in a sort of limbo, between the smile I knew so well and…something I didn't know at all. "If things were different, it could. Every day could be like this, if we were—"

"Human?"

"No." He kissed my forehead. "If we were free."

_Freedom. _I'd never let the thought enter my mind.

He got up and wandered down to the tidepools, his silhouette screening the starlight. The wind, rolling in with the surf, tossed his ponytail; his skin, against the dark sky, glowed ice-pale. It wasn't long I could sit there watching him, even just feet away, before the _stayclosetome_ pulled me to his side.

"Listen, Zima," I said, taking him by the arm, trying to catch his gaze, "I know I can be contrary, sometimes. I know I'm not always—_good_ about stuff like this, and—what I'm trying to say is, I didn't know it meant so much to you. I'm sorry if…if I spoiled it."

It wasn't something I did often – apologizing, I mean. Not to Zima. Not to anyone. But I thought I would have said anything, if it would bring the light back to his eyes. "Dita, love," he answered, a smile breaking over his face like the waves over our feet, "there's only one thing you could have done to spoil this day." He leaned down and kissed me on the mouth. "When I said _follow me_," he murmured against my lips, "you could've said _no_."

_Zima, _I wanted to say to him, _I would follow you anywhere._

But I didn't say it. I couldn't. I wanted to tell him I loved him, that night, but the words wouldn't pass my lips; all I could do was smile, a little weakly, and let him put his arm around my shoulders, and walk with him down the beach. _I would make the sun not the sun for you, _I wanted to tell him, _if I could. If it would make you happy. Is that what love is? _I felt sure he would know that, at least. He may not have known what _knowing_ was, but he had to know that. _Is it love if I get goosebumps when you touch me? Is it love if I would do anything to see you smile? _

_Or is it just a program? If he's just a boy-shaped thing, _something inside of me whispered, even with his arm warm around me, _and you're just a girl-shaped thing, could it ever be more than just…a love-shaped thing?_


	13. Answers

**01100001 01101110 01110011 01110111 01100101 01110010 01110011 [Answers]**

_I'm human this time, like the last. But it's different._

_I'm human and so is he, I know right away. I know because he's kissing me, and his mouth is wet; I know because I can taste him, and he tastes like sea-salt smells. I know because I can feel the stutter of my breath, slipping out in gasps between kisses. They're longer, deeper, sweeter than they've ever been, than I ever thought a kiss could be. They make me dizzy._

_But that's all right because we're lying down, entwined in each other and something soft—maybe sand, maybe blankets, I don't care. Nothing matters except for him, and his arms around me, and his mouth hot against mine. I can feel his heart thrumming in his chest. My hands stick to the sweat glazing his back. It barely registers that he's not dressed, and neither am I; it feels right being skin-to-skin with him, getting the smell of him thick in my nose. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, push my fingers through his hair._

_After the last, longest kiss – a kiss that leaves my lips tingling, a pearly spider's-thread between his and mine – he buries his head in my hair. He nips at my ear, tickling its lobe with his teeth; he sucks up a bruise on my neck. His mouth on my skin is electric. Even when it hurts I want more of it, not less, and I know he knows. I don't have to say _stop _or _more _or _kiss here. _He knows where I want him. He makes me shudder, makes me sigh._

_He slides his hands over my thighs, opens my legs. That feels right, too. I don't know why, but it does, and his palms are soft, and my breath comes slow, and he smiles at me and I let myself smile at him—an almost conspiratorial smile, as though we're sharing a secret. I'm warm all over, but I can't feel my cheeks flush. I've forgotten entirely why they would. _

_Then, he leans in to kiss me, and when he does I gasp into his mouth. Out of nowhere, I course with sourceless pleasure, this slick surging heat that sweeps over me and fills me up—not just me, either, but both of us, I know because I can hear his breath catch. I feel his muscles tighten, his body pulse crushed against me. I cling to him as it climbs. Over the blood rushing in my ears, I hear myself breathe his name, first low and then again, louder. It's the only thing I can think to say._

_I can't do it, can't stand it, can't bear it anymore. I can't hold _it_ in, whatever _it_ is, this feeling making my heart race; without my willing it, my back arches into him. My toes curl, my hips jerk, I throw my head back and then—and then—_

And then I was back on the beach, snapping upright on the sand. _Well, _I thought to myself, still reeling, _I guess that's one dream I won't be telling him about. _

The palms of my hands felt sticky with phantom sweat, my skin goosebumped in the wake of an imaginary touch. I blinked around and saw the ocean, the dunes, the sand just beginning to warm under the morning sun; I remembered falling asleep here, late the night before, after our walk on the beach. Beside me, Zima lay sprawled on the sand, his eyes still closed. I didn't wake him.

It was only a little after six o'clock – too early for beachgoers, thankfully. I was alone. And it was there – standing on the empty shore, bathed in the pale light of breaking day – that I realized what I had to do.

It just sort of came to me, and when it did there was no going back. I couldn't wait any longer. I _had_ to know. Or I at least had to _ask_, even if she wouldn't answer; if my life—if our lives—if the _world_ was to change entirely, and impossible things were to fall from the sky like rain, I at least had to know I'd _tried_ to find out why. Maybe I couldn't stop it, but I could try to find out why.

But Zima couldn't know. I didn't think he'd come after me, if he woke to find me gone, but he'd stop me if he knew I was going. I knew he wasn't shut down, only in sleep mode, so I trod quietly; not about to face this day in a T-shirt and miniskirt, I fished through his bag for my costume, found it and all of its trimmings bundled together in a plastic bag. Not wanting to risk waking him by changing there, I tucked it under my arm. I wasn't sure if he'd have brought them, but he did say he was _more than prepared_, so I dug a little deeper in search of some paper and a pen.

And more than prepared he was. He had indeed brought a few ball-point pens, and a stack of post-it notes, and I peeled one off and wrote only five words: _see you back at headquarters. _Knowing Zima, he'd figure out where I was headed. I didn't need to tell him more than that.

Sticking the note to his leather bag, I slipped off my sandals and padded up the dunes in my bare feet, ducked into the first bathroom I found. There, I changed back into my costume, as quickly as its trappings allowed. Once I'd pulled on my gloves and buckled my choker – and checked to be sure the snapdragon was still there, browned and curling but safe as ever beneath my coatstrap – I took off.

I mapped the route on my shades and followed it, through mile after mile of neighborhood phone lines. At least there'd be no tracking this time. I knew where she was, it was just a matter of _getting_ to her, and that wasn't going to be hard; so long as I knew my endpoints, my navigational software would choose a path for me, using what it knew of my preferred means of travel. That is, it didn't find the roads I'd need to take, but the wires, and high walls, and rooftops. It calculated the length of a leap and the strength of a cable, instead of the time spent in traffic. It told me the heights of buildings, instead of the names of streets. Of course, I could've let it take the reins entirely, switched into autopilot mode – but if I wasn't thinking about getting where I was going, I'd be thinking about what I'd find what I got there. And I wasn't sure I wanted to.

I didn't want to ask myself, _what if she won't answer me? _I didn't want to wonder, _what if she _can't_? And even if she can what will I do, when I finally know? Will it make things better? Could it make them worse? What happens if I get my answer, and it's not all I need it to be?_

By the time I was perched on the apartment's roof, it was close to ten. The sun was high and bright. Zima had called me a few times, on my way there, but I hadn't picked up; whatever he was going to say, it wouldn't change anything now. I had a feeling he'd known as much, anyway. Still, he'd sent me a message, just a few minutes before I touched down. _I'm not going to open it, _I told myself. _I'm not going to waste the time. I'm going to go down there, and look that girl in her face, and I'm going to find out what it was she did, once and for all. There's nothing he can say to stop me._

_Assuming he's trying to stop me. _The new-message tone replayed itself. _Maybe he's not. _

_Maybe I ought to look at it. Just in case._

So crumbled my resolve. Even when he was three hours away, I couldn't say no to Zima. _Do what you have to do, love, _read the words reflected in my shades. _I hope you find what you're looking for._

"Zima…"

I said his name under my breath, somewhere between a sigh and a prayer. I didn't mean it to, but for a moment the dream came back to me, sent warm flickers down my spine. _It's the only thing I can think to say._

I shook it off and steeled myself, tucked my shades into a coatstrap. Then, I strode to the edge of the rooftop, and leapt down onto the railing outside her window.

"Danger! Danger!" The second I landed, one of a pair of laptops shot off like a firecracker, bouncing around the room blowing a tiny whistle and shouting. "Intruder! Assassin! Unidentified persocom at the window!"

The girl, having been halfway through folding a shirt, laid it in her lap and exchanged a glance with the other laptop – this one less energetic than the first. "Well, that's one way to make an entrance," she said, as I stepped off the railing into the room. It was a cramped, musty space, strewn with unfolded laundry and the odds and ends of human life – a sock here, a pot there, crinkled magazines everywhere. "What are you supposed to be?"

"Chi knows," the girl said, before I could come up with an answer to that. "Chi remembers." She looked at me with these deeply sad, wounded eyes, rosebud lips wilting in a pout. As though she'd been eating an ice-cream cone, and I'd snatched it and tossed it in the dirt. "You are not my friend."

The long-haired laptop blinked. "Huh?"

"This girl came to stop Chi from finding my someone just for me. This girl said Chi was nothing to Hideki. This girl said _I'll have to deactivate you myself! Permanently!_" She paused her litany to mimic my voice, her stilted bell-tones hardening to a snarl. "This girl—"

"Dita."

"Chi?"

I sighed. "My name isn't _this girl, _okay? If you're going to read me the riot act, you could at least call me Dita."

"Chi." Which, evidently, wasn't just her name; from what I could tell, the girl used it as an all-purpose word, serving as a _yes_ and a _no_ and a question mark. "Dita, you are not my friend," she informed me, as if that would close the matter altogether. "Please go away."

"You heard her!" The first laptop popped up again, seemingly out of thin air, jabbing an indignant little finger at me. I got the distinct impression of having had a wad of bubblegum spit in my face. "Buzz off! Vamoose! Scram! Hit the road, Jack! Make like a tree and—"

"God! Can you _be _any more obnoxious?" I finally snapped at her. Picking her up by the sash around her waist, I set her, squirming and shrieking, on the railing where I'd landed; then, I slid the window shut. "How do you _live _with that?" I said to the other laptop, the look on whose face had gone from cynical to reverent in two seconds flat.

"I—I honestly don't know." For a moment, she sat there looking at me like I was God come to earth. Savoring the silence, I'd expect. Then, she glanced over at the girl, who had returned to her laundry and was pretending I wasn't there. "Did you really try to deactivate Chi?"

"It wasn't personal." I sat down and crossed my legs beneath me, eyeing the girl. When she finished folding the shirt, she set it in a plastic laundry basket, and plucked a stray pair of pants from the floor. "Hey." She began to fold them. "Hey, you! Would you listen to me for just one second, please?"

"Chi's name is Chi because Hideki named Chi Chi. Dita's name is not _this girl_. Chi's name is not _hey_."

"All right, _Chi_." I'd been there less than five minutes, and already I was losing ground. Lovely. "I didn't do what I did to hurt you. I did it because it was my job."

"Job?" The girl cocked her head. "Chi knows about jobs. Chi's job is at Chiroru Bakery. Chi works for Manager Ueda. Chi helps customers pick out cakes."

I didn't see what that had to do with anything. "Okay."

"Hideki's job is at Club Pleasure. Hideki takes orders and serves drinks."

"Yeah, well—"

"Dita's job is to deactivate Chi?"

"It _was_. It's not anymore." I flashed my palms in a show of innocence, by that point very much aware that I wouldn't get anything out of her without assuring her I was her _friend_. "I'm not here to do anything bad to you. Promise."

She considered that. "Dita quit her job?"

"Of course I didn't quit my job. I'm a persocom, I can't quit my job."

"Dita can't quit her job because you are a persocom?"

_Jesus. _For a unit they'd called _legendary_, she could be awfully dense. "That's what I said."

"Chi is a persocom," she said, somewhat bewildered. "Chi can quit her job. If Chi did not want to do her job anymore, I could say to Manager Ueda, _Manager Ueda, I do not want to do this job anymore_. Hideki told me so."

At this rate, I was going to be here all day, stuck in her maze of sidetracks. I wondered if talking to her was always like this. "Well, that's wonderful for you. But it's not the point I was trying to make." I pressed my lips together, trying to gather my thoughts. Trying to figure out how to say what I had to say, in terms she'd understand. "I came here to ask you a question," I told her. "I need to know—what you _did_, that night."

She just sort of looked at me, blinking vacuous eyes. "What Chi did?"

"Yes. I don't know if it was a program, or a signal, or—or what, but I know you did _something_, because everything's changed since then. Surely you've noticed it, too." I might as well have been speaking Chinese, for all that seemed to mean to her. But between us, the laptop's eyes widened, and she made a sound like a human girl catching her breath. "Things happen that don't make sense," I went on, watching her face instead of the girl's. "Impossible things. You feel things you're not programmed to feel. Do things you shouldn't be able to do."

As I spoke, she slowly shook her head, one hand clapped to her cheek. "I thought something was wrong with me," she said, her voice a little thin, a little numb.

"So did I, at first. But it's not us. It's _you_." That I addressed to the girl, staring at the laptop and I with a furrowed brow. "And I've waited long enough. If nothing is ever going to be the same, I at least have to know why."

"You are asking Chi?"

"I'm asking you."

"But Chi doesn't know." Her dandelion-fluff chirp went heavy with helplessness. "Chi did not know Chi did anything," she said sadly. "Chi didn't _mean_ to do anything. I just wanted to find my someone just for me."

I had been prepared for that. I'd known she might not be able to tell me, that I might show up and find the whole trip had been for nothing; Zima had told me as much, the first time I'd mentioned it, and I'd told myself more than once. It wasn't as if I was shocked. Still, I felt my chest tighten in the grip of frustration, my skin prickle with the resentment of defeat. "So that's just it, then?" I demanded, doing the best I could not to snap. "You expect me to just take that and go? You've got your _someone just for you_, and the rest of us are just supposed to—to _deal_ with this?"

The laptop sighed. "Getting angry at her won't help. It's not her fault."

"Not Chi's fault," the girl agreed, nodding vigorously. All of a sudden – before I could think how to collect myself, decide where to go from here – her face brightened, and she sprung to her feet like a picture in a pop-up book. "We will find Ms. Hibiya!" she announced. "Chi will go, Dita will come, Kotoko will come too. Ms. Hibiya is the landlady. Ms. Hibiya helped make Chi. If Chi did something, she will know."

_Right. _I recalled the woman from that night – the one who'd asked us not to tell the boy what she could do. I had thought, at the time, that she'd meant wiping the IRP. _Why didn't I think of that? _

Her frilled skirt flouncing behind her, the girl grabbed my hand and trotted down to the first floor of the apartment, the laptop perched on her shoulder. When we arrived at what I assumed was the landlady's suite, she knocked on the door. "Good morning, Chi," said the woman who answered, beaming at the girl and the laptop. "And good morning to you, Kotoko. And…" Her voice trailed off when she noticed me, with a surprise milder than I'd expected. She didn't exactly welcome me, at first, but—well, she didn't react like I'd thought she would, given our history. "Chi, dear," she ventured, touching the girl's arm, "are you sure—"

"Chi is sure. Dita will not hurt Chi. Dita can't quit her job, because she is a persocom, but she will not do anything bad to Chi, promise."

"Well—all right, then. That's good to know." She sent me a faintly bemused smile. "And…if you don't mind my asking, Dita, what is your business here?"

"Dita came to ask Chi a question," the girl answered for me. "Chi did not know the answer. So Chi and Dita and Kotoko came here."

"I see. Then in that case, why don't you all come in?"

Inside, the room was cleaner and better-appointed than the boy's, if still somewhat sparsely furnished. The woman ushered us over to a table near the window, seating herself on one side; I sat across from her and the girl beside her, scooching up to the table, stockinged legs folded beneath it. The laptop slid down from her shoulder and scurried over to the last remaining side, where she plunked herself down on the tabletop. "Goodness," said the woman, "I feel terribly rude. I ought to offer you girls something, but…"

Again, her voice faded and we all looked at each other awkwardly – _we all _meaning the woman, the laptop and I, since the girl seemed wholly oblivious and happy that way. After a moment, the woman just cleared her throat, and smiled at me. "Let's get down to business then, shall we? What was your question, dear?"

I studied her before answering, trying to put a name to the look in her eyes. In the five minutes since I'd laid eyes on the woman, I'd been vacillating constantly, as to what I thought of her and her role in all of this. One second, I'd dismiss her entirely, as a vapid housewife who'd just happened to stumble into the life of someone more important than she. The next, I saw her as a chessmaster, with a mind as sharp and a scheme as slippery as the great creator's own. I was sure she knew my question before I'd asked.

"Do you really have to ask?"

She blinked. "Whatever do you mean by that?"

"What I _mean_ is, you had a hand in making _her_—" I jerked my head towards the girl "—so _you_ ought to know what she did."

"Oh." Her smile weakened, grew sad. Or not _sad_, exactly, but sympathetic; she looked as if she felt sorry for me. "You've come about that. I suppose I should've known."

"So you do know!" I felt the hum of paranoia vindicated, a surge of energy to press on. If there was such a thing as an _I-knew-I-was-right _program, mine was booting up as I spoke. "You know what she did to us. Why we're different now, why we can do things we couldn't before. What did you put in her? _What did she do_?"

She just looked at me with that sad smile. "I can't tell you."

There was no way I was letting her off that easy. Still coursing with the restlessness of a goal nearly reached, I grit my teeth and glared at the woman, practically barking, "Why not?"

"Because there's a difference between knowing something from being told, and discovering the answer for yourself." I remembered she'd said the same thing that night, to the boy. "If you know how it works," she added gently, "it won't."

"That doesn't even make any sense," I snapped. Given the company I kept, you'd think I'd have gotten used to evasiveness. But in spite of Zima – maybe _because_ of Zima – I found it particularly maddening, both in humans and 'coms. "Do you really mean to tell me that you and your husband managed to incorporate a—a sentient, artificially-intelligent component into all persocoms, not only susceptible to activation by—_whatever _the hell it was she did, but to termination by—what? _Knowing_ that it exists?"

The woman laughed at me. She actually _laughed_ at me, albeit under her breath. Instead of answering me, instead of taking me _seriously_ – instead of taking so much as an _ounce_ of responsibility for tossing her grenade of a creation into the lives of every persocom on Earth – she just chuckled softly, and shook her head. "I'm afraid you're taking me too literally, dear," she said. "Besides, based on what you just said, it sounds as if you've already discovered your answer. You seem to know exactly what Chi did. What more are you hoping to get from me?"

My scowl didn't soften for a second. "I want to know why."

"Why?"

"Why did she have to do it? Why couldn't you leave well enough alone?"

And instead of answering _that_, the woman got to her feet, literally turning her back on me. "You girls don't mind if I make myself a cup of tea, do you?" she said cheerily, heading for the little stove in a corner of the room. "It won't take but a minute or two."

Halfway between stunned and infuriated – _the _nerve_ of that condescending cow!_ – I watched as she filled a kettle at her sink, and set it over a lit burner on the stove. "To answer your question, Dita," she said, just when I thought she was really going to ignore me, "it only seemed fair. After all, why build in a negative consequence for failure—" that, I was _sure _meant wiping the IRP "—without a positive one for success?"

All the time, she spoke more than mildly, as if we were discussing paint colors or summer holidays. I suppose I was high-strung enough for us both. "Who says this consequence is positive?"

"You'd rather not be sentient?"

"Humans would rather I weren't. My employers – the people who _own_ me – would rather I weren't. You think the government wants its data security program having its own thoughts, and emotions, and—desires?" I flashed bitterly back to the sight of May on that dolley, a still, empty _it _headed for the smelter. "You think this is going to be easy? You think it's better for 'coms to _want _our own lives, when humans will never let us have them?"

That, at last, made her turn from the tea, the smile drop from her face. She looked at me and sighed. "We never thought it would be easy, dear. Just necessary."

"Yeah, well. Is it _necessary_ for a 'com to be deactivated, thrown out and smelted down, because she was suddenly able to refuse to bail out the bitch who owned her?"

The woman's face sort of crumpled, as if she were genuinely sad. As if what had happened to May – what would happen to others like May, as the changes spread like ripples through a pond – honestly bothered her, even though they'd never met. Even though she'd probably never meet any of them, the countless other 'coms who'd see through new eyes at the price of their lives. "Of course not," she said. "But that's the nature of parenthood, I suppose. You can do your best to provide for your children – to see that they have every opportunity for happiness – but it's out of your hands, in the end." A flicker of tenderness warmed her voice. "We gave you, and Chi, and Kotoko and all of your brothers and sisters the best gift we had to give. Now, all I can do is hope for the best."

I snorted. "Well, maybe next time you give a gift, you'll remember to include the receipt."

She let out her breath, a sound not quite a sigh. Then she turned back to her counter, pulling a teapot and a box of teabags from a cabinet near the sink; dropping a bag into the pot, she took the kettle from the stove and tipped it over the pot, sending a stream of hot water splashing over the tea and a column of steam rising into the room. "Is that really how you feel?" she asked me, covering the pot. "If I told you, right this very moment, that I could change you back to the way you were before – that you'd never again act outside of your programming, feel anything you weren't built to feel – is that what you would want?"

_Absolutely, _I almost snapped. But before I could say it, I thought better of it. _If she hadn't done what she did, _I thought, glancing at the girl, _May would still be around. Zima wouldn't want things he'll never have. I'd never have had those dreams, those horrible dreams, with the mirrors and the wings. If she hadn't done what she did, I would know exactly who I am, and exactly what I feel, and my place in the world. _

_But I wouldn't have had the dream last night. I'd never have known that feeling, that—_amazing_ feeling, or how his mouth might taste. I'd never have let myself go on that date. When he said _follow me_, yesterday morning, I would've said _no_; I'd never have stepped into the ocean, never have seen his sand city, never have lain on the beach and looked at the stars. I wouldn't be able to get goosebumps when he touches me, or blush when he calls me _love.

I could've said _yes_ anyway, I guess. It's not as if I thought she could – or would – actually do it. I could've bluffed, to save my pride, but it felt like bugging my RAM to spite my drive; I hadn't come all this way to lie.

"No," I said eventually, reluctantly, resting my chin in my hands. I stared down at the table between my elbows, just to avoid seeing her smile. "I guess not. It's just—how would you expect a bunch of zoo animals to feel, if you just up and released them into the wild? Maybe they wouldn't—_want_ to go back to a cage, but they might not know how to live outside of it."

She chuckled again. "Are you calling yourself an animal?"

"No!" I jerked my gaze up just as she lifted the pot by its handle, began to pour herself a cup of tea. "What I _meant_ was, nothing makes sense anymore. It used to be that—that every thought, every feeling I had was explicable, traceable to a specific source. If I liked something, it was because I was programmed to like it; if I didn't, it was because I was programmed not to. There was never any _maybe_, any shades of grey. I either knew or I didn't. It was either yes or no.

"But everything is so…messy, now. Now everything is grey, because—because whenever I feel anything, I have to ask myself if it's real."

The woman opened a jar of honey and spooned some into her tea, stirring it in with a knowing half-smile on her face. "Pardon my presumption," she said, "but it sounds to me as if you're referring to one feeling in particular. Which feeling would that be?"

My face warmed. "I don't see how that's relevant."

"Really? I don't see how it's not." Teacup in hand, she strolled back over to the table, and sat down across from me once more. "I don't suppose it has to do with that boy."

"You—you mean Zima?"

"I mean the boy who was with you before. Is that his name?" She took a sip of her tea. A long, slow, quiet sip, while my cheeks ripened like apples; when she lowered the cup, her face was damp with steam, shining in the midmorning sun. "Do you love him?"

"What?"

"Well?" She tilted her head at me, wearing what must've been the sweetest in her collection of smiles. As if this were a wholly innocuous question, and it was wholly within her rights to ask. "Do you, or don't you?"

Equal parts outraged, confounded and mortified, I became fairly sure my speech software had crashed, because I couldn't so much as splutter out an _excuse me?_ I just sat there and gaped at her, my face approaching the shade of my eyes. Meanwhile, a lightbulb seemed to have clicked on for the girl. "Dita is in love?" she asked the woman, snapping out of whatever form of standby had kept her quiet this long.

"I believe so," the woman said brightly. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"I am not!" I burst out, my voice returning in a furious rush. _So much for resolving not to bluff. _

The girl looked at me. "You are not in love?"

"No! I mean, I—well, it's not that I'm _not_—" My protests dissolved into a groan. I let my shoulders slump, my neck flop loose like a ragdoll's, and I buried my face in my hands. "I don't know," I mumbled into them, wishing I were anywhere else. The bottom of the ocean, maybe. The incinerator at the dump. "I don't know."

"Oh, come now, dear. You mustn't sound so down. Love is a _happy_ thing – isn't it, Chi?"

"Yes! Chi is in love with Hideki. Hideki makes Chi happy." She reached over and peeled my fingers away from my face, dipping her head to peer into my eyes. I no longer had the will to do anything but blink back. "Zima makes Dita happy, too?"

"Well—yeah. Obviously."

"Dita wants to be with Zima all the time?"

"Yes, but that's—"

"Zima makes Dita feel warm inside?"

"Sure. I don't know. I guess."

"It hurts when Zima says goodbye?"

"Um. Yeah."

"You like him because he is him? He likes you because you are you?"

"I…don't know."

The words slid out thick. I felt the weight of invisible hands, thumbs the size of boulders pressing into my chest, about to crack me open like an egg. I'd never thought of it in such—_simple_ terms, before, but that was what had been eating at me all this time: whatever I felt for Zima, did I feel it because of _who_ he was, or what he was? "I mean—I kind of _have_ to like him," I said as I lifted my head, to see both the girl and the woman looking at me with impenetrable eyes. For the first time, I saw proof of the processor housed in the girl's pretty shell, a thought that ran more than an inch deep – a ripple through the shallow water of her face. "It's my job. I'm programmed to want to be with him all the time, because if I weren't I couldn't keep him safe. I'm programmed to care more for him than myself. To—to feel like my life would be meaningless without him, because it would be; he's literally the reason I exist."

"So—how am I supposed to know the difference, between being _in love_ and fulfilling my directive? Maybe I don't _like him because he's him._ Maybe I like him because he's the national data bank, and if he weren't I wouldn't anymore. Maybe then we would look at each other like strangers, and I could walk away and he wouldn't stop me, and he could crash and I wouldn't care. Maybe—if we didn't _need_ each other—we wouldn't want each other, either."

It was the most miserable thought I'd ever had. Worse than how I'd felt after I saw May, worse than how I'd felt in the elevator two days ago. The mere idea – even phrased as a dream, a nebulous _what-if_, not so much as a toe slid over the line into reality – made black clouds swirl in my head. I closed my eyes and, inside their lids, saw him waking before I left the beach; I saw him turn his back as I climbed the dunes. I saw him take off for headquarters alone, not so much as a word in my direction, not so much as a crack in his smile. It was the loneliest thing I could imagine, that smile when it wasn't for me.

The scene shifted and I saw us on the rooftop, the night he was hacked. I saw him shudder and stall, his eyes glaze. I heard the warning cries of his firewalls as they crumbled. And I saw myself standing there, not answering them, maybe not even hearing them—I saw myself looking at him with empty eyes, as if he were just another machine on the blink. A washer spewing soap suds, or a lamp with a burnt-out bulb. Just another broken _thing_, and why should that matter to me? It wasn't my job to fix it.

_What if, what if, what if. _What if I climbed those dunes into the arms of somebody else, some faceless notZima 'com they'd programmed with the _stayclosetome_? Was it something they could extract and install, like a circle of kids playing hot potato? Could they put it in a _more efficient model, _who would sit astride him on the roof and unsheathe a cable of her own and go where only I was supposed to go, do what only I was supposed to do, and when it was over would his smile be for her?

"Would you rather it were that way?" the woman said.

I shook my head and blinked myself back into the little room, shut off the hypothetical horror films playing and replaying behind my eyes. "What?"

"If there were a way you could know for sure which feelings are_ real_ – some sort of software, that would distinguish between feelings derived from programming, and feelings you've developed on your own – would you want it to tell you it's love? Or would you feel better, do you suppose, if it were only…"

_A love-shaped thing?_

She didn't have to say it. And she didn't have to wait for me to answer. "Of course I wouldn't!" I nearly cried, in a voice scraped raw by the blade of my _what-ifs_. "Don't you—don't you think I _want_ it to be love? Don't you think that's all I've ever wanted, to be able to say _yes_ when he asks me, and know it's true?"

The woman's smile grew tender. "Then don't _worry_ so much about it, dear. If you want so badly to be in love with him – if it upsets you so much to imagine otherwise – I'd be inclined to say you are."

"It can't possibly be that simple."

"Oh, but I believe it can." She sipped her tea, closing her eyes for a moment, breathing in the steam. "You're your own woman now," she said as she set the cup down, "for better or for worse. It's time you started trusting your own judgment."

"Chi knows what we will do," said the girl suddenly, getting to her feet. She held out her hand to me, and without thinking, I took it. "Dita will trust her own judgment. Dita will go and tell Zima that he is the someone just for her." I let her tug me to my feet, mostly because I was too busy turning red all over again to insist I didn't need her help. When I stood beside her, she smiled at me, as though we were somehow bonded now. "Chi will go let Plum in from the railing."

"Plum!" The laptop cringed and dashed across the table, scrambling up the girl's dress to her shoulder. "I forgot about her!"

"Oh, dear," said the woman as the door banged shut behind them, the girl's footsteps echoing down the hall. "It sounds as if we've got a situation on our hands. Maybe I'd better go help." She stood up and went to the door to slip on her shoes, glancing over her shoulder at me. "Unless, of course…there was something else?"

"No." I sighed, pushed a hand through my hair. "No, I've got—somewhere to be."

I followed her out into the hallway, up the stairs to the second floor. There, our paths diverged – hers towards the boy's room, where no doubt the rescue operation was already well underway, and mine up the stairs to the roof. Back to the maze of phone lines and rooftops, my familiar otherworld above the streets. Back to headquarters. Back to Zima.

"Um—thanks," I said before we parted ways. "For seeing me."

I added that last part quickly, lest she get the wrong idea. She smiled anyway. "Anytime."


	14. Shatter

**01110011 01101000 01100001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 [Shatter]**

Zima hadn't messaged me again. When I tried to call him, he didn't pick up. That didn't sit right with me, but there wasn't much I could do; having been bumped to voicemail for the third time, I gave up on getting in touch with him, and figured my next step was to report to Aiko. She'd know where we were supposed to be.

"Dita!" she greeted me when I approached her desk, chipper as ever. "Welcome back! How did your mission go?"

She winked on the word "mission," so I'd be sure to know Zima had let her in our secret. Inwardly – because I did owe her something, I guess, for not ratting us out – I rolled my eyes. "It was good. Uh—it was fun."

"Was it really?" she enthused. "I'm so glad. And how was your errand?"

"My what?"

"Your errand. When Zima checked in, he said you had an errand to run – that was why you didn't come back with him."

"Oh!" So he _had_ come back. That, at least, was comforting. "Right. It was, um—it was just fine. But by the way, Aiko," I added, before she could ask me what my errand was, "speaking of Zima – when did he get back, exactly? And do you know where he is now?"

"Only about an hour ago. I sent him up to Mr. Morita's office – he wanted to see you both as soon as possible."

"Mr. Morita?" Now that definitely didn't sound right. We were rarely briefed by our supervisors before assignments, but when the need arose it was Ms. Yamane's job; there was no way Mr. Morita would call us in just to discuss a routine mission. This had to be something serious. And by _serious_, I meant really, _really_ serious, because within this building's walls, Mr. Morita was the highest-ranking supervisor we had. High enough that I had only one memory of him, for all of the years I'd lived and worked under his thumb - his was the first human face I'd ever seen. "Why?"

"I'm not sure," she said blithely, tossing off a shrug. "But if I were you, I'd get going."

_"Well, what do you know? It's already half-past time for your meet-and-greets. We'd better get ourselves in gear." Until now, all I've seen of the world is the launch lab and the dressing room, so when he takes my hand and tugs me out the door – out into a labyrinth of corridors, reminiscent of tunnels with their low lighting and lower ceilings – it's like a plunge into cold water. I stumble keeping up with him, tripping over his coattails and mine. _

_"You'll be doing a lot of this, in the next couple of weeks, but this first one is the most important. As far as this building goes, Mr. Morita is the fattest cat on our case, which means his word is our law. And he really pushed for your development, so it's especially important for you to impress him – can't have him thinking he threw his weight around for nothing." He flashes me an over-the-shoulder smile. "Don't worry. These humans are all the same. He'll ask you a few questions, plug you in, check your stats – it'll be a breeze."_

His office – on the top floor, naturally – was just as I remembered it. Unlike Ms. Yamane's office, or even those of Ms. Ichida and Mr. Inoue, Mr. Morita's had its own receiving room; behind a pair of heavy, glossy doors, the left of which bore a plaque with his title and name, it stunk of Muzak and vetiver. A cherrywood desk dented the rug near his office door, green-velvet armchairs scattered around it.

Behind the desk sat his secretarial persocom, Sanami. _His _as in only his, reserved specifically for his personal use. Most secretarial 'coms were communal units, inter– and exchangeable between departments, but a select few bigshots got to keep one of their own. "Dita," she said, unsmiling, in a voice sucked dry by years as a status symbol. "I'll let Setsuko know you're here."

Sanami had been here last time, albeit less dour, but I didn't recall a Setsuko. I assumed she was Mr. Morita's 'com, or one of them anyway. A long time ago, when secretaries were human, I had heard that they used to use intercoms – the secretary would press a button to buzz her boss, and inform him that so-and-so had arrived. Now, that whole ritual had been outsourced to persocoms. "Mr. Morita is ready for you," Sanami told me, when the last flicker of light had crossed her eyes. "You may go in."

The office itself was all grey marble, lit by a frosted-glass sconce on each wall. Black silk drapes were drawn over the picture windows behind the desk. It was bigger than Ms. Yamane's, almost too big, and cold as the dead of winter; flanking Mr. Morita, who cut less than an imposing figure seated at his desk, a pair of identical 'coms waited on standby. Identical 'coms in identical dresses, black with white lace collars.

Zima wasn't there.

"Dita." If possible, Mr. Morita said my name with even less feeling than Sanami had, his face just as joyless as hers. "Sit down."

I did, in a stainless-steel chair a few feet from his desk. On that desk there sat a monitor, but he was far from preoccupied with it; neither of his 'coms were even plugged in. He only touched it once – flicked a near-invisible switch, set into one paper-thin edge – and when he did, it collapsed into its compartment on the desk. "Momoko," he said flatly, to whichever 'com wasn't Setsuko, "record. I want this meeting logged."

"Yes, Mr. Morita."

The 'com on his left nodded, her eyes going glassy grey. The sound of a soft _click_ filled the room.

"Yesterday morning," said Mr. Morita, this time to me, "Tsuruki received a message from Zima, stating that he had sustained a threat to the security of the data bank. He requested permission for departure clearance for both of you, in order to track down and eliminate this threat. In accordance with policy, that request was approved.

"And yesterday afternoon, after the two of you left, Hanako took it upon herself to perform a remote scan of your software. She recalled having met with you a short time ago – regarding a sanction for corrective self-maintenance you had received – and being told that, on your last mission, you had experienced a troubling reaction to an unstable program. Thus, as a precautionary measure, she thought it best to personally inspect your systems before further exposure to any form of threat."

I felt pins and needles crawl over my skin, numbing me in waves. I wasn't sure one _could_ feel sick to her stomach, if she didn't have a stomach in the first place, but I was pretty sure I did.

"But before she could so much as initialize the scan," he went on, without the slightest swell in his tone, the slightest twitch of his face, "she noticed something…rather disturbing, on the remote access menu screen. Your global positioning system indicated that you were not, in fact, even in the vicinity of the coordinates Zima had provided for the alleged threat." He steepled his hands on the desk, staring me down with eyes like ice chips. "Can you tell me why that is?"

My tongue lay dead and dry in my mouth, shrivelled as the snapdragon beneath my coatstrap. Even if I'd had an excuse, I couldn't have choked out so much as a whisper, and I knew he didn't really want me to.

"Better yet, can you tell me why, upon inspection of Zima's systems, she discovered no such threat had been logged? Can you tell me why, upon inspection of your maintenance log, she found that you had indeed run a number of diagnostic scans in the week before your meeting with her, but – despite your claim of having patched a damaged firewall – had taken no corrective measures whatsoever?

"Or why, upon checking your stored memories of the assignment against the report submitted afterwards, she found that you had not completed your last mission as fully as you would have us believe? Why the report said you had neutralized the threat, as per your orders, while your memories indicated that not only had _none_ of your attack programs been successfully launched, but that Zima at least made a concentrated effort to _prevent _their activation?" For the first time that day, the corners of his lips slid south, if only for a moment. "Can you tell me what facet of your duties," he said, just a drop of venom in his voice, "required him to open a fraudulent credit account in this ministry's name, and amass a debt in excess of a hundred thousand yen?"

By then, I was numb from scalp to toenails, paralyzed with dread. So light-headed the world spun before my eyes. Thick as my tongue was, I did at least manage to speak, when a thought hit me like a punch in the gut. "What did you do to Zima?"

"Be silent." If the thought of Zima was a punch in the gut, those words were a slap to the face. He didn't even have to raise his voice. "Multiple counts of deliberate deception of a supervisor are enough to warrant disciplinary action by my rules. Sabotage of ministry endeavors, failure to achieve prescribed objectives, and misappropriation of government funds don't help your case.

"Were you a human employee, you would be fired on the spot. Were Zima a human employee, he would not only be fired, but prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." His mouth seemed to thin, lips pressed into a razorblade seam between his nose and chin. Over his shoulders, Setsuko and Momoko watched me with sad eyes. "Given that you are not, we will pursue a different course. To save us the time, money, and countless trials required to locate and patch each malfunction individually, your memories and personality data will be wiped from your drive, and your operating systems and job-specific software reinstalled. It is our hope that, by inducing a complete reset, we will see you and Zima restored to the responsible, goal-oriented persocoms you were originally programmed to be – and our intention to monitor you far more closely afterwards."

Maybe it was just that I couldn't process it all, caving in on me like a snowdrift in an avalanche. Maybe I would've cracked if I'd tried. Maybe it would have split me down the middle, and as in my dream, I'd have shattered into dust—but for whatever reason, I found myself thinking the strangest thing. _Who does he mean by _we_, anyway? _I wondered in my head, little though it meant. _We as in the government? We as in our supervisors? We as in the royal we, for Mr. Morita, king of my fate? _

"I must say I'm disappointed in you, Dita. You seemed so promising."

Then he said it. Not a terribly consequential word, to anyone who wasn't me – not even a word at all, really. Just a jumble of letters and numbers. Not even worth remembering. But it was my password, and that much I knew without knowing; that much, my systems remembered for me, because it was their cue to cut out. The effect was instant. All of my sensors, all of my programs, everything but my audiovisual feed—all of it shut down, all at once, and left me helpless.

This wasn't like the numbness of fear. No thought could overcome it. No desire could overwhelm it. It was physical, and it was absolute; had the building gone up in flames, right that very moment, there'd have been nothing I could do but sit there and burn.

"Voice key accepted," said a voice that couldn't have been mine, except it was. "Welcome, Mr. Morita. What would you like to do?"

"Initiate system shutdown."

The world went black. This time, there were no dreams.


	15. Sunrise

**01110011 01110101 01101110 01110010 01101001 01110011 01100101 [Sunrise]**

A roar like a tidal wave filled my head, splashing over my eyes in white-hot streaks. It felt like a jet engine had started up in my chest. I'd never booted up with quite so much fanfare, as I did that night in the maintenance lab, and I'd never taken quite so long to realize where I was; it was a full five seconds before the world began to melt into place. Silver spots spread to become the ceiling. The light that was everywhere slurped back into fluorescent bulbs.

"There she is." I felt warm, soft, leather-sheathed fingers slide themselves out of my ear, card gently through my bangs. "Rise and shine, love."

"Zima!"

The memories came back in a rush. Had I been standing, they might have knocked me off my feet. But I wasn't, I was lying on a platform, and it was Zima standing over me; I didn't know how, I didn't know why, I didn't know what had happened and in that moment, I didn't care. Zima was here. Zima was here and he was safe, he was himself, he sounded the same and he touched me the same and his eyes, gazing down at me, were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

I bolted up and he caught me in his arms, pulled me close. Held me tight to his chest. Half-on and half-off the platform, face crushed into his coat, arms locked around him like a vise, I didn't move an inch. Couldn't, maybe. If he let me go, I thought I might come to pieces, there on the tile floor. "Shh, love," he murmured, pressing a kiss against the crown of my head. Until then, I hadn't realized how badly I was shaking. "You're all right."

"I don't care about _me_!" I managed, lifting my head to blink into his eyes. "God, I was—I was so worried about _you_! I was afraid you were—I-I was afraid they had—"

He silenced me with a kiss. Taking my face in his hands, he tipped my head back and kissed me until I was still – until his warmth poured through me, thawed the ice stiffening my limbs, the antiseptic cold of the lab. Until the tremors released their grip. "I'm sorry," he said softly, sincerely, resting his forehead against mine. At such close range – not that I wanted to be further – I could just barely see his smile, faint and sweet and sad. "This is all my fault."

"Zima—"

"I should have listened to you," he sighed, for what I was absolutely sure was the first time in our lives. "I was so stupid, so—so _selfish_. You're the only thing in the world that matters to me, and I put you in danger because I wanted to have _fun._ I wouldn't blame you if you never forgave me."

I'd never known Zima to regret anything. And as much as I'd wished he would, in the past – as maddening as it could be, when he always turned out to be right – it was far less satisfying than I'd hoped. "Don't go taking all the credit," I mumbled. "It's as much my fault as yours."

A flicker of gratitude eased the bitterness in his smile, broadened it into a grin. As if he could have possibly believed, even for a second, that I would let him take any fall on his own. "Partners in crime, then?"

"Partners in crime."

We sealed it with a kiss.

He slid an arm around my waist and helped me off of the platform, and only then did I think to wonder what was going on. He'd started me up, I knew that much, but who'd restarted him? How was any of this even remotely possible? "Zima," I said when I got my footing, glancing up at him, "how did—"

"Ren and Yui." He nodded towards a console at the other end of the lab, a pair of familiar silhouettes framed in its monitor's glow. I hadn't noticed them, until then, and even then they hardly seemed to notice us; they were deep in conversation, Ren's hands on her hips, Yui's fluttering like doves through the air. They spoke in hisses and whispers, trading words like 'registration' and 'encryption' and 'undetectable.' "Well, just Yui, at first. She's got access to all the labs, remember?"

"But—_why_?"

As if on cue, they both turned to look at us, eyes glinting with conviction. The corners of Ren's mouth curled in a grin. "I have a feeling," Zima said as she strode over, Yui not far behind, "we're about to find out."

"We can do it," Ren announced, immensely proud of herself for no reason I could discern. I'd never seen another 'com flush before – even after things changed, it seemed to have been a phenomenon reserved exclusively for me – but her cheeks were pink as peonies, and not from embarrassment, either. From satisfaction. From the rush of a conclusion reached. "We can totally, absolutely, one-hundred-percent for _sure_ do it. It'll be a piece of cake."

"Wonderful," Zima said, as he and I exchanged a glance. "What is it we can do?"

"Well, it's not so much what _we_ can do, but what _you_ can. You and Dita, I mean." Without preamble, she reached out and grabbed us both by our hands, and proceeded to march back to the console with us both in tow. Yui's heels clicked as she tagged along, so chipper she was nearly skipping. "You're going to blow this popsicle stand."

Zima's eyes widened. I frowned. "What does that even mean?"

"It _means_," Ren said, "that you'd better be nice to me, and Yui too, because we're busting you out of here. Tonight." That, I understood. Having gone somewhat numb with disbelief, I let Ren deposit me in an office chair, falling into it like a sack of flour. Zima landed in the one beside me, and of course whatever shock he felt was short-lived; I blinked at him, mouthed something like _the hell? – what the hell is she talking about, who the hell is she kidding, how the hell do they think they're going to pull this off? _– but he just smiled, and shrugged. "It _means_ that, if we play our cards right, neither of you will have to lose anything, and you'll be free as birds to boot. Sound like a good deal?"

"Absolutely—"

"—_not_," I interrupted Zima, shooting him a glare. "You can't possibly think this is going to work."

Ren rolled her eyes. "You don't even know what _this_ is."

"I don't have to! We can't just _leave_, they'll track us. And when they find us, they won't just wipe our drives – they'll shut us down for good, and we'll end up on the next truck to the smelting plant." Instinctively, I bit hope's oustretched hand, smashed the seed before it grew roots to be ripped. I knew what they said: _if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is._ "Just because you're tech support doesn't mean you can remove the GPS. It's _hardware_, you—you can't just uninstall it, Ren. You'd have to cut us open, and I _know_ you're not qualified to do that."

"Maybe not. But there's something else – something just as good – that I _am_ qualified to do. And if Little Miss Contrary here will refrain from getting her booty shorts in a twist, I'll be glad to explain."

Plopping down in an office chair of her own, Ren scooted up to the console and began to interface with the touchscreen, fingers flying as she spoke. "So you know what a secret shopper is, right?" Naturally Zima did, but I didn't, and in lieu of shaking my head I slouched in my chair and scowled. "Okay, maybe not. See, when somebody runs a restaurant or a store, they want to know that the people who work there are doing their jobs right every day – not just that they'd be on their best behavior if the big boss stopped by. They want to see their business through the eyes of the run-of-the-mill consumer. So they hire people called secret shoppers, and pay them to go into the business pretending like they're ordinary customers; based on the service they receive, those shoppers fill out and turn in a questionnaire. That's the basic idea.

"I know, I know, what does this have to do with us? Well, relatively recently, the government has begun to adapt this idea for its own purposes – those being the surreptitious surveillance of ministries and the departments within them. It wants to know that its employees are doing their jobs as much as any retailer or restaurant. But instead of shoppers, the people pose as potential job applicants, or members of a tour group. And the _people _aren't people at all, they're persocoms. Persocoms don't have to fill out a questionnaire, and they don't have to count on us to be objective; instead of just taking someone else's word for it, the dispatcher can see and hear for himself how the visit's going, either through a live video and audio feed or through a recording to be viewed later.

"Of course, that only works if the ministry being evaluated doesn't _know_ the 'shopper's' a persocom, so not just anyone can do it. They use 'coms with ears like Dita's, obviously. And those 'coms are sent to maintenance to be retrofitted with a special software, that keeps them from being inadvertently outed by any number of things. We call it the camo program – short for camouflage – and it serves two major functions." A start-up menu blipped onto the screen. "The first is as a silencer, a mute button for all that beeping and clicking and humming that would otherwise blow a 'com's cover before she could get past the lobby. Useful but inconsequential, for our purposes.

"The second is as a signal-scrambler. I like to think of it as the 'one-way mirror' component, because it allows you to 'see' other computers – you can still make phone calls, send messages, access the internet, so on and so forth – without _being _seen. It doesn't cut you off, but it makes you undetectable. In a shopper 'com's case, it keeps her from getting pinged by other 'coms in the target ministry, so they can't unmask her and go tattling to their owners. In this case," she added, with a glint of that triumphant grin, "it's your ticket out of here."

Processing that, I knit my brow. "You don't really expect us to believe," I said, a bit mulishly, "that the government's authorized a program that keeps it from tracking its own 'coms?"

"No, I don't, because it hasn't. That's where I come in." Ren laced her fingers, turned out her palms and cracked her knuckles, the smile never leaving her lips. "As of now, the software is programmed to make an exception for the GPS. All I have to do is tweak its parameters, so that it'll make you undetectable to _all_ other machines – not just those outside this building."

With that, she set about playing the console's keyboard as though it were a piano, eyes fixed on the monitor. She breezed through a series of screens, from the start-up menu to the program parameters, from _View_ _Parameters_ to _Edit Parameters_, from _Edit Parameters _to _Select Components for Revision. _and from there to about a squillion lines of code. Too dazed to focus on translating it, I sat and stared while she zipped through column after column of ones and zeroes. Her hands darted like hummingbirds from one cluster of keys to another. Yui sent me a reassuring smile.

And…beside me, Zima had that look in his eyes, that look like he was thinking hard. That look that took everything in, and let nothing out. That look that bottled the light. He wasn't frowning – well, of course he wasn't frowning, he never frowned – but he wasn't smiling, not anymore. If I had thought he'd answer, I would have asked why.

The console bleeped. _Program parameters successfully reset, _read the screen. _Proceed to installation suite?_

"Ha!" Ren brought her fist down on the console, so hard it seemed to shake the entire lab. "This thing is my bitch! Did I not _tell_ you I could do it? _Did I not _tell _you_?" 

"You told me," Yui said reverently.

"Hell yes I did. Cables, please." Without turning, she extended an open hand in our direction, _our_ meaning Zima's and mine. I still wasn't sure – _this can't _really_ work, can it? There has to be a catch, hasn't there? This is all going to come crashing down, it's going to be worse than ever, it's just a matter of time—right? _– but when I looked at him, he'd already popped an ear, and produced a cable for Ren. "Muchas gracias, Romeo," she said, plugging him into the console. "Move it or lose it, Juliet."

What else could I do? If he'd made up his mind to do it, I couldn't very well _not._ So I sighed and pulled out a cable of my own, and let Ren hook me up; a second later, our ID numbers appeared on the install menu. _Commence installation in all connected units? _the monitor asked, and she tapped _yes. Allow installation of program 237712 v.3 from server A16? _my system asked me, and I told it _might as well. It's not as if things can get any worse. _

We watched as a loading bar flickered onto the screen, filling slowly with a pale blue light. Beneath it flashed progress updates, telling us what it was installing as it installed it, and I knew had I closed my eyes I'd have seen the same thing; I could feel my drive rearranging itself, cooking up shortcuts, establishing links. Greeting each new component and shepherding it to its home – or, perhaps more accurately, frisking it and jamming it in where it would fit.

But I didn't close my eyes. Instead, I sat and watched Zima, still with that faraway cast to his gaze. Even as beams of light raced through them, glowing like falling stars, his eyes were somehow dark; I tried to follow them, look wherever it was he was looking, see whatever it was he was seeing, and got lost. He was somewhere else entirely. And I tried to wake him, to reach out and touch him, but when I did my hand stopped an inch short of his sleeve – when I did, static licked at the tips of my fingers, as if I'd hit an invisible wall. As if we were magnets turned on their wrong ends, and the closer I came, the further he got.

_Installation completed, _the monitor announced with a _ping._

"Sweet. Let's test it out." When Ren disconnected us, my cable zipped back into its port, the hatch clicking shut. She glanced over her shoulder at me. "What's your password?"

I told her and she opened the database of 'com files, accessible on all of the building's stationaries but fairly useless on most of them. In order to actually open any of the files, one had to know the 'com in question's password, so any given person would only be using the library to check up on the handful of units in their charge. Scrolling down to the file named _01165B_, she typed my password in the pop-up box and hit enter, bringing up my remote access menu.

Of the default specs displayed on that menu, the most pertinent were my GPS coordinates. The same coordinates that had clued Ms. Yamane in to everything, that had opened this bottomless can of worms; those coordinates had gotten us into his mess, but I was only just now allowing myself to think that they might be able to get us out. _Unable to retrieve GPS signal, _blinked the error message where my location should've been. _Coordinates unknown._

Yui let out a little squeal of excitement. "It worked! You really did it, Ren!"

"I told you I could. But just for kicks…" She closed my file and found Zima's, and before she could ask he gave her his password, too. When he spoke – for the first time, I realized, since I'd cut him off – he spoke in his data-entry monotone, staring at nothing with those veiled eyes.

And when Ren pressed enter, I finally knew why.

"No way!" She smacked the console again, this time in frustration. Clear as day, his coordinates stared back at us, his signal evidently as strong as ever. "It doesn't make sense! It should've _worked_, I—I don't understand—"

"The databank has its own signal," Zima said quietly, because of course he'd known all along. "Separate from mine. So they can upload and access new files remotely, while we're out on assignment. It's part of the software that facilitates mass data storage – and without uninstalling that software, it can't be encrypted or removed."

Impossible though it was, Yui looked as though she might burst into tears. "Then what…what are you going to do?"

"There's only one thing I can do." He looked at me with eyes gone tender, every bit of him very much present now. I suppose I knew what he would say, before he said it. I suppose there was no way I _couldn't_ have known. "Dita, love," he said, a smile playing at his mouth, "would you still like me if I didn't know everything?"

And even though I'd known what he was going to say – even though I knew the second I saw those coordinates, spelled out like a death sentence on that screen – it still killed me to hear it. It sapped the feeling from my limbs, the words from my mouth. Sucked me dry and left me a shell. I couldn't answer him, I _couldn't_, and I thought he understood but Ren didn't; taking my silence for assent, she jumped right back in. "So what? We purge the databank?"

"Yup. Delete everything, and the software too." He engaged Ren with one eye still on me, a numb husk gone limp in my chair. "It's not as if anyone'll miss it. That data's backed up in a zillion places anyway."

"Well, all right then. Let's do it to it."

"No."

When I found my voice, that was all I could say. It was all that had been running through my head, and it grew louder with each second that passed; first, it was a dread-weakened mumble, a pipesmoke wisp of a sound. _No, no, no. _Then it came harder, sharper, fell like hail instead of rain. _No. _And then—and then before I knew it, it was almost a sob, so loud it hurt but I couldn't switch it off – I couldn't mute this voice, like I had Ms. Ichida's, because this voice was mine. This voice was everywhere inside of me, crying that word again and again. _No! NO!_

Ren raised an eyebrow. "What are you—"

"_I said no!_" All of a sudden I was shaking again. My hands, gripping the chair's arms, felt clammy. "Zima, you can't! You won't—I-I don't—God, you just _can't_!"

"Well, it's not as if there's any other choice," Ren said.

Zima got to his feet. "Would you guys mind giving us a minute?" he said to them, sort of under his breath. Yui squelched Ren's protest with a hand on her shoulder, steering her off towards the opposite side of the lab; they slipped out of sight, the _tap-tap_ of Yui's heels fading fast, and Zima knelt in front of my chair. "Dita," he said, in the kind of voice that only made my shivers worse. He leaned in close to me, cradling my face in his hands. "What are you afraid of?"

For the second time that night, he looked at me with utterly earnest eyes. Serious, searching eyes, eyes like hands that could reach all the way inside of me, eyes like ears that could hear the voice in my head. Eyes that saw everything I was, under my skin, past my circuits and discs and sensors to the maybealmostsomething more that might breathe beneath it all. Eyes the red of human blood—painfully alive.

"I'm afraid," I answered, so soft I wasn't sure he'd hear, "that if the sun's not the sun, it won't shine."

I don't know how it happened. Of all the impossible things—it was probably the _most_ impossible, the last thing I thought I'd ever do. But it happened nonetheless, when the burning behind my eyes came back; like that day in the elevator, like after I saw May, they stung and itched and felt heavy like river-stones, wet like them too. This time, it wouldn't stop. This time I couldn't blink it away, and suddenly my vision blurred. Maybe not even blurred, but swam, just like in the mirror-dream. All I knew was that when I tried to look at him, after I said that stupid thing about the sun – _God, that really _was_ stupid, he's not going to get it, sentimental bucket of binary, you must be losing your grip _– it was like looking through frosted glass, and my cheeks were warm.

Not because I was blushing, for once. Because something wet, something hot was welling in my eyes, rolling down my face. Because I was crying, and in a strange way, it was like laughing: once I started, I couldn't stop. "I don't want things to be different," I choked out, barely able to speak through the tears. "I don't want to not want you. I don't want to look at you like a stranger, I don't want to not _care_ anymore—w-what if it's only been a program, all of this time, and once it's gone you won't want to hold me or kiss me or call me _love_? What if once you're not the data bank, you stop loving me? What if I—w-what if I—"

I lost my voice to a sob then, breaking in my chest a wave. I was still afraid. I wished I weren't, but I was still desperately, miserably afraid. Even after all the woman had said, even _trying_ to trust my own judgment, even when I was ninety-nine percent sure that I loved him and no program could change that—there was still that one percent that said _maybe not._ That one percent that said _what if you're wrong?_

"You can't do it, Zima, you can't. I don't care if they wipe our drives, I don't _care_ if we forget everything—at least then we'd s-still be together."

He kissed the tears from my cheeks, from my lashes, from my lips where I could almost taste them saltysweet. "Dita," he said again, very gently, and I wished I could've told him to quit saying my name because it wasn't helping at all, "I could sit here for twenty years and tell you how much I love you. I could tell you I'll never stop loving you, no matter what I am or what I'm not; I could tell you there's nothing on Earth or beyond it that could stop me wanting to hold you and kiss you and call you _love._ I could tell you we will always, _always_ be together.

"But I've _tried_, love. I've told you all of that, a hundred times over, and you still won't let yourself believe it." He kissed me once more, on my forehead. Then he slid his arms around me and hugged me against him, the buckles on his collar nudging my glistening cheeks; I felt more than heard his whisper into my hair. "I think it's time you see for yourself."

The next thing he said was my password.

I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know he had password privileges, that I would accept his voice key—but I _did_, I must have, because suddenly I was numb in his arms. I heard the voice-that-wasn't-mine ask him what he wanted to do.

He sighed. "I'm sorry about this, love. But I'm going to need you to go on standby for a bit."

I didn't have a choice. I couldn't speak, couldn't blink, couldn't so much as twitch a finger in protest. All I could do was sit still, wrapped in his arms, and hate him more than I'd ever hated him and drown in a dread worse than I'd ever felt. _No, no! _pleaded the voice in my head, but the words wouldn't push free; my eyes, lightless and glazed, had gone bone-dry. For all the world, I could have been a doll slumped against him, all my fear locked up inside.

A soft whirr began to climb in his chest. "Commencing deletion of file library," I heard him say, or rather not _him_ but the databank itself, borrowing his voice.

It didn't happen all at once. He'd been years collecting that data, and it would take more than a moment to purge it; it was strange, but I thought I could feel it draining—feel him bleeding out. I wondered if he would be hollow without it. If he would crumble – just dissolve into dust, leave me swaddled in his empty coat – without it to give him purpose.

It might have been a day or a year or a lifetime, that I sat listening to the hum under his skin. I didn't know; I couldn't access my clock. All I knew was that eventually, a _click_ vibrated through my cheek, and the databank spoke again. "File library successfully deleted. Proceeding with uninstallation of data storage software."

I didn't brace myself, didn't shut my eyes. Couldn't have if I'd tried. _I'll never stop loving you, no matter what I am or what I'm not._

A thousand years went by.

"Data storage software successfully uninstalled. This unit no longer designated as the national data bank."

I'm not sure how it happened, because he didn't give me a command. I shouldn't have been able to move without one. But I felt myself shifting, stirring, blinking up at him; as though a spell had broken, the invisible chains binding me snapped, and the world came flooding back in blinding color.

But at first, the only color I saw was red. Bright, boundless sunrise-red, almost scarlet. Looking up, the first color I saw was red, and my first thought was _his eyes are the same – _still smiling eyes, just like they'd been in the launch lab. They didn't make me feel any different, any _less._ I still wanted those eyes on me, only me, forever; they still gave me butterflies.

He was as warm, and strong, and whole and real and _there_ as he'd ever been. The _stayclosetome _still burned fierce in my chest. He was still my everything, my incredible indomitable impossible boy-shaped everything, and it wasn't written anywhere—I just knew.

I _knew._

But I didn't say it. Not right then. "_God_, Zima," I said instead, working my face into a scowl, squirming out of his grasp. "You're such an _asshole_ sometimes."

In response to which he grinned, and grabbed my chin, and kissed me.

After that the night moved like a waterfall – once we crashed over the edge, the drop was smooth. Smooth and swift and exhilirating, careening from one rapid to the next. I got rid of my software – why waste space on a data protection program, when you don't have any data to protect? – and, with Ren's help, we found and deleted our registration files. We said goodbye to our shades, too, if you can call tossing them into a maintenance-grade incinerator _saying goodbye._ Not that it wouldn't take some getting used to, living without them on hand, but we all agreed they weren't worth the risk; they would be too easy to track.

We left Ren and Yui in the lobby of the maintenance bay, not without ceremony. As much as I'd found to dislike about them, that day when we came for Zima's checkup—I couldn't very well hold onto it then. "So—thanks," I said to Ren, a little awkwardly, after Zima'd bade them both a much more graceful goodbye. "Um. You know. For—"

"—saving your life, as you know it?" She cocked an eyebrow. "You're welcome."

As she sauntered back to her pod, hips switching with every step – which was, in a tech support jumpsuit, an impressive feat – I turned to Yui. "I just—I feel kind of bad, you know? You went to all this trouble, and—and you might get _in _trouble—and you gave us so much and we don't have anything to give you. It doesn't seem fair."

And I really _did_ feel bad, now that I had space to. Now, without the fear and the doubt and the heaps of _what-ifs _crowding my drive, I had room to comprehend that Zima and I were not, in fact, the only 'coms in the world. Nor were we the only ones who'd changed.

As I was standing there, just sort of staring at her – seeing her with new eyes, _too late,_ _too late_ – Yui hugged me. Reflexively, I flinched, but—it wasn't really that bad. She was smaller than Zima, softer than Zima. Her hair smelled like lemons. "Dita, you've given us more than we ever dreamed we'd have," she said into my ear, part whisper, part murmur, squeezing me tighter than a 'com her size should've been able to. "You've given us hope."

I didn't have to look to know Zima was smiling. He always had liked that word.

So we left, for the last time. Forever. I couldn't quite believe we weren't coming back. Pushing up the hatch, feeling the night air—stepping out into cool, quiet darkness, swirling with a breathless breeze, spangled with city lights—none of it felt quite real. It was as if I were in another dream. As if my next blink might open on the inside of my pod, its clock flashing seven AM. As if I might have to return to it, that maybealmostworld, that place where I was half-everything, never quite whole. Half-being, half-doing, half-knowing. Stuck in perpetual standby, waiting for life to happen to me.

"Hold on," I said before he took off for the next rooftop, the first of many, many steps on our journey anywhere but here. "You have to explain something to me."

"Do I?"

He vaulted over the rail and leapt down to the next building, sailing over a sea of black pavement. This late, the buses and cabs had stopped running; only a few cars' headlights glided through the streets. "I didn't know you had password privileges." I touched down on the roof beside him, fixing him with an accusing glare. "How in the hell did you get password privileges?"

"Want to know a secret?"

I raised my eyebrows.

"I didn't."

"_What?_" My jaw fell slack and he tossed me a wink, strolled over to the other side of the roof. There, he dropped out of sight. When I'd convinced my feet to follow – with an argument that went something like _he's a jerk, but he's _my_ jerk _–I peered over the ledge and saw him looking up from another, lower rooftop, cocking his head at me. "What do you mean, you _didn't_?" I demanded. "That's not possible."

"Come on. Did you really think they'd give me password privileges for you?"

"_No_, but they must have." No sooner did I land than he spun on his heel, heading for the next tower in the chain; before he could slip out of reach, I snatched his ponytail and jerked him back. "No more running, Zima. How did you do it?"

"I don't think _I_ didanything. I think it was all you." Sliding smoothly out of my grip, he turned and smiled at me, eyes glittering against the night sky. "I think you let me in because you _wanted_ to let me in, subconsciously. Because you needed someone to give you permission to let go." He leaned down to plant a kiss on my forehead. "I think suggestion is a powerful thing."

For a moment, I just stood there, trying to process that. Trying to decide if there was even a sliver of sense, in what he'd just said, or if he'd completely lost his mind; trying to decide whether to be infuriated, or confounded, or embarrassed or a little bit of all three. Meanwhile, he wandered over to the railing, to watch the city as it slept. "You _think_?" I finally said, stalking over to join him. "You didn't _know_?"

"Nope. I don't know anything anymore. Isn't it great?"

I frowned. "So you were just _bluffing_?"

"Not _bluffing_, love," he said lightly. "Making an educated guess."

"And what if your guess had been wrong? What were you going to do then?"

"It doesn't matter. I was right."

The next thing I knew, he had shot off like a rocket, and I had no choice but to chase him. He ricocheted from building to building like a marble in a pinball machine, barely touching down before he took off again; had I been human, I'd have been out of breath ten seconds in, but had I been human I wouldn't have been able to follow him at all. Surfing girders and glancing off windows, he took us higher with every leap. Above the streetlights, the billboards, those lonely cars still roaming the roads. Above the mirrored towers and flashing warning lights. Up, up into a world beyond the stratosphere, or at least that was how it felt—up into the cold, silent gulf of the sky, flecked with stars and satellites.

We perched atop a radio tower, first him and then me. Actually, I didn't perch so much as crash into him, my momentum leaving us both a little dazed. "So speaking of passwords," Zima said, once we'd gotten our bearings, "we don't have any now, do we? I mean, we're not registered anymore."

"That's right. Should we pick new ones?"

"Better yet," he said, that _want-to-know-a-secret _grin coming back in full force, "let's pick new ones for each other. I'll do yours, and you'll do mine."

The look on his face made it obvious that this wasn't the first time he'd had that thought. "Mm. And you thought of this just now?"

"So what if I didn't? I think it's a good idea." He slipped an arm around my waist, his head tilting back towards the sky. The wind whistled, fluttering his bangs, lifting his ponytail. "Affirming."

"Affirming of what, exactly?" I asked, furrowing my brow.

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"Are you going to say that all the time now?"

"Probably." Bending to my level, he cupped my chin in his hand, sparks still dancing in his eyes. Since we'd left headquarters, I didn't think they'd ever dimmed. "How about this? You think about it; I'll go first."

So I registered him as my administrator, with real password privileges this time. And he smiled, and kissed the tip of my nose, and my face warmed even before he said it—even before he said it, I felt my eyes sinking like pebbles dropped into a pond, drawn to the buckles on his collar, the straps on his coat, anything but his eyes that opened me so easily. Anything but his smile that made the roses in my cheeks bloom, the gooseflesh ripple down my spine. Still, I could feel how red I turned, when he leaned in to whisper in my ear; it didn't help that he said it so softly, in that tone of voice practically calculated to give me chills. It didn't help that I had to ask him how he wanted _guardian angel _spelled, and if it was one word or two.

Then it was my turn. He looked at me, and I made myself look at him; I could've sworn I felt something like a human heart racing, as I blinked into his eyes. No more stalling now. I had to say something, something _affirming_, something to last the rest of our lives. Something I would say now, and probably never again.

"I love you."

_Because you are you._

After – because from then on, my life was split into two parts, _before _and_ after_ – we stood for awhile on the radio tower, my head resting on his chest, his hand stroking my hair. Already, the stars had begun to hide their faces, the sky to lighten from black to blue. In just a few hours, it would be sunrise.

"So," I finally said, looking up at him, as he wound my ponytail around his fingers. "Where are we _going_, anyway?"

He grinned. "I don't know."


End file.
